I keep reading about "home schooling" in this case as if it were automatically associated with fundamentalism. There's a much more likely reason: they've been expelled from school permanently for disruptive or damaging behavior.

Note that they were also significant suspects in an auto theft case. Also note that the skull as bong story was told with little to no emotion. That's definitely someone who's used to dealing with police, mentally ill or (most probably) both.

Regarding home schooling, there are other motivations as well. I've talked with several people who have taught in the Colorado school systems.

Very few of the schools are functional in regards to preparing someone for higher education. The state run colleges here are also sub-par.

I can also imagine feeling it necessary to do that in Kansas precisely TO avoid the fundamentalist harassment. It would be interesting to actually research the percentage of home schooling parents who do it for because they are fundamentalists. I'd guess it's far less than 100.

Things have gotten so bad so quickly that I'm concerned they'll still get worse under even a Democrat president. We've gone from "Give me liberty or give me death" to "Give me safety no matter what it costs".

As someone who writes software for a living and has observed the rapid erosion of privacy in the business sector alone, I'm very concerned that we are slipping into a totalitarian state.

As has been noted here repeatedly, the TSA seems almost totally ineffective in improving safety while simultaneously being very effective at conveying a police state attitude.

Now we have a president who has repeatedly disregarded laws intended to restrain him even in war time urging congress to retroactively grant that same ability to private enterprise.

Note that the only large telecom to refuse, Qwest, has been denied access to significant business opportunities with the government as a result. We have an executive branch that will stoop to anything to destroy the rule of law to gain what it wants - power and more power through fear.

This has a lot of parallels in other countries that were democratic and are moving into fascism. Please note the similarities to Zimbabwe and Mugabe, Russia and Putin. Also note that the press is under increasing pressure with regards to access to confidential sources in the US.

It's heartening to see congress finally growing some backbone finally. I hope they get a 2/3 majority on performing the investigation. I also hope they do pass the legislation that's been kicked around explicitly granting the press the right to safeguarding immunity of their sources.

We badly need to get back to a true fourth estate as well as a congress regaining it's own powers. If this fails, we are letting the president to usher our democracy into fascism.

I like the approaches used by Seth Roberts in dealing with insomnia and mood disorders. I've definitely noticed a correlation between my body fat content and my ability to sleep. In my case, it's waking up frequently during the night and switching positions.

I think that is motivation enough to begin weight loss. Perhaps I'll try his approach on that.

Has anyone else found methods for managing mood and regulating sleep that have worked for them?

To #34:

That's just a basic acknowledgement of how a packet network works. If you're on the same subnet, you see ALL packets. Your ethernet interface is normally programmed to ignore ones not addressed to it.

If the interface is set to "promiscuous mode", it returns all packets to the rest of the computer. There are well known tools that are freely available that allow this to happen.

Note that this is only over the same subnet. Routers and switches are set to transfer packets to a neighbouring subnet that takes them a step closer to the specified destination address, etc.

The packets hop from subnet to subnet until they reach their destination. If a given subnet is compromised as described above, they also can see your data in the packet.

Comcast is just stating the technically obvious - the internet was NOT designed for security, that's just how it works.

If you are concerned about security, you negotiate that between your end and the other end and agree on how to set that up. Those measures typically mean encryption of the data in the packets so that packet interception doesn't tell an eavesdropper near as much.

The most common encryption techniques are SSL and VPN. The former is used by browsers in talking to websites when transferring sensitive data like passwords or credit card info. You should see "https" instead of "http" as the beginning of the web page address as well as a padlock in the locked position on some browsers.

A VPN is commonly used when connecting between your work and a computer at home or between business offices. The VPN software on the home end already has an agreed upon encryption method, a data file that uniquely identifies the computer doing the connection and something called a key (or key pair) that is used to encrypt the data.

The office has a copy of the uniquely identifying data as well as a copy of that key (or one of the key pair). This is more secure as a VPN doesn't have to send negotiation information in readable form at all. That's all already been decided on.

Both of these approaches have been in common use since the internet became viable for home shopping and talking to work computers from home. Comcast is neither worse nor better than any other internet service provider as far as that goes.

Well, this certainly goes a long way towards reviving the push by other countries to remove domain registration from US control and placing it with an international body.

If this doesn't happen, I can easily see there being a split in the internet and those of us who actually valuing freedom of expression using non-US DNS services as a primary source.

To #8, it's well documented (now) that the Bush administration had begun working with AT&T and Verizon, etc. on monitoring calls and internet traffic several months before 9/11. Any benevolence disappeared no later than Bush took office.

Given the Clipper Chip fiasco, I think it started well before that. We're not far behind Britain in demanding that people hand over private keys for all encrypted information.

Too bad he wasn't born in the US or we'd have a viable presidential candidate this time around.

[Raises his hand multiple times]

I dunno about creepy. The tough part would be eating a work of art. Nicely done!

I'd wager you could add some crushed red kix to the marshmallow cream before coating the noodles. It would give it a chunky red tomato sauce look.

For you strict vegetarians, substitute dried peas for the "meat balls". I'm sure His Noodlieness would be accomodating.

Actually, I read the RIAA's website on the piracy issue and found the following page:

http://www.riaa.com/physicalpiracy.php?content_selector=piracy_online_the_law

It appears that they've backtracked considerably from their original assertion that you can rip tracks from your own CDs and put them on MP3 players. See the last section "Copying CDs" - particularly point 3. The "won't generally raise concern" is of particular interest.

It seems that it's getting harder and harder to know what you can do with content purchased from RIAA members other than sit there and stare at the packaging.

Along with SILPOL @43's comments, I'd like to point out that they are an LLC and thus privately held:
http://www.washingtontechnology.com/top-100/2007/privately_held.html

And that they, along with the other "security" companies are often aggressors with little to no accountability:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/19/AR2007111901942.html

The actions described above (and in numerous other places if you google) clearly describe aggressor behavior btw. There's no way they're not mercenaries.

Regarding Erik Prince and family being the founders of blackwater, here's a direct quote from their site:

http://www.blackwaterusa.com/btw2007/archive/101507btw.htm

Finally, the right-wing fundamentalist part. Here's a letter written by Gary Bauer eulogizing the father of Erik Prince:

http://www.iclnet.org/pub/resources/text/frc/frc-msn.9504.txt

His son is also mentioned very warmly in the letter.

I've found BestBuy to be just as bad with bait and switch. As solid proof, go google articles on how they had a complete duplicate of their external website accessable from the inside of the stores.

Strangely, the sale prices on the internal website weren't matching those of the outside website. The sad thing is that the average employee had no clue this was going on so they'd just deny the website price.

If you DO shop BestBuy, be sure to bring a printout of the website page with the date/time on it. It would also be good to get the BestBuy IP address and use that in the in-store computer's browser instead of the bestbuy.com name. It will be a real education to the employee ...

To Jerd @ 25, I'm not sure I understand why you assume there's a dom/sub relationship between someone and their sex toy. While that's certainly a possibility, I can see where someone would treat them as more of an imaginary friend - providing both sides of the relational/sexual dialog if you will.

You can argue that the requirement to manipulate the sex doll requires dominance. The problem with that viewpoint is that it extends to any imaginary relationship - including kids with stuffed animals .

I suspect that those who see such a thing as problematic are uneasy with the whole idea of sex with dolls/robots. To compensate, they'd like to assume that anyone who does is inherently unhealthy.

I'm not sitting from on-high with that observation by the way. It took me decades to come to terms with being gay. A major rationalization was that it was inherently unhealthy.

To #12 and #20, you raise excellent points. I believe that the majority of us seek relationship for relationship's sake - not because we truly know the other person. The divorce rate certainly seems to support that.

I think there are a very few people who's self knowledge, inner strength and maturity can lead to relationships where they do know each other AND are compatible enough for romantic relationship. I just think it's damned few.

Chris

Chris

The flying spaghetti monster cult got it's start during the relatively recent Kansas debate over teaching "intelligent design" as opposed to or along with evolution.

Since it was (as the judge noted) a transparent attempt to inject Christianity into the curriculum, some folks decided to have some fun with this.

They reasoned that the "intelligent designer" they took advantage of the loophole that the "theory of ID provided and stated that he/she/it must be the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

The set up a website with a brief theology and some images. It's since taken off hugely as a way of parodying religionists wherever they try to run other peoples' lives. Note that that includes theists of various sorts who respect the freedom of others.

I love the fact that self described "pastafarians" have retained a sense of humor about themselves along the way. That's been the first mistake made by religious control freaks.

Folks, if you read the new testament, it's clear that Jesus was primarily incarnated as a human to serve as a sacrificial offering - a la Judaism as it was practiced at the time.

People routinely bought doves, goats, etc in the temple yard and brought them to the priests in the temple to be sacrificed to God for atonement or thanksgiving.

In fact, the animal sellers set up in the temple courtyard (by permission of the priesthood) would only accept "temple money". Of course, the exchange rate for regular money was hideous. I'd guess the animal sellers gouged the people as well.

So you have all these people trying their best to live observant lives and getting gouged mercilessly on the very grounds of the temple. That's what got Jesus pissed off enough to chase them out with a whip.

Anyway, the NT letters to the Hebrews and Galatians take great pains to portray Jesus, as the perfect human - thus the once for all sacrifice for our sins.

In other words, Jesus let them kill him because it was his job to die at that point. It was NOT because he was a pacifist.

On the other hand, it was clear that the early Christians were - at least when it came to government entities. Paul, the author of the above NT letters was a major example in this.

On the gripping hand, you have this same Jesus forecasting an eternity of torment to those that didn't play ball. It's the first time in the history of Judaism/Christianity that a clear concept of Hell is presented.

Speaking as an ex-Catholic, ex-fundamentalist, got no answers type, it's all just damned confusing. On that note, I would strongly caution those who go for quoting the "go buy a sword" comments Jesus made to review ALL of his comments.

Many of them were highly metaphorical imagery. They were meant to shock his listeners out of their complacency and get them to THINK about things instead of blindly following current tradition. In fact, most of his criticism of his core followers was that they took him way too literally and needed to think for themselves.

As for Blackwater and mercenaries in general, I refuse to judge anyone based on behavior of the whole. Not all Vietnam vets sprayed peaceful villagers with napalm, ya know?

I will say that it's painfully clear that the government and all the "security companies" hired by the government are there precisely to separate accountability from behavior. Not exactly a model of Christian ethics. So, yes, I definitely agree with the irony shown there.

Actually, I suspect that most of the "pastafarians" are not atheists. We just resent christian faction that is attempting to ram its viewpoints and morals down our throats by hijacking school boards and government in general.

The FSM started as a way of logically showing that "Intelligent Design" can only argue FOR a creator - not what that creator is. Logically, that would mean you'd have to give equal time to ALL the various religions - not just postulate the christian god as the designer.

Of course, this is just a way to make clear what creationism and ID are. They're actually an attempt to force the teaching of a particular brand of christianity that takes a literal view of the Bible.

I think you'll find many Lutherans, Presbyterians, as well as other theists just as willing to giggle at this as any atheist - and for the same reasons. It's not their beliefs we're making fun of - just the dishonesty and disrespect.

I've written a response to Jerry Pournelle's blog writings on this issue and would also like to post it here. My hope is that other SFWA members read it and consider the proposal.

Hey,

I can definitely appreciate your anger over illegal use of your works and the anger of others. It's especially egregious that this is a site making money off this, though that's not the core issue. What is probably even more frustrating is that BoingBoing and other sites are getting lots of traffic over this as well.

What does seem to be the case, though, is that there's been a lot of venting and not much effort so far practical solutions. That's hinted at by the SFWA president, so I may be wrong.

The problem at both SFWA's and content sites end is the scale of the effort needed to ensure copyrights are honored. The SFWA attempted to deal with that by use of just software - with some spectacular failures. From the comments on BoingBoing, other authors - only some of which are SFWA members - objected to the SFWA demanding that their work be removed without their consent.

It would probably make the most sense for the SFWA to offer a service that members must subscribe to. That service would automatically forward links to the members that are suspect.

They could then provide confirmation on violations found through a web UI. This distributes the effort of human aware validation and also provides an audit trail for legal purposes. It would also allow explicit DMCA takedown notices to be sent immediately.

I realize that it takes time/money to provide the web UI functionality. However, I and probably other professional software developers would be willing to donate their services for an open source project such as this. A lot of us DO pay for the science fiction we read and want quality work to continue.

I realize this places some of the burden of effort on the copyright holders, but it's the only part that you can control. If this makes sense to you, let me know.

sincerely,
Chris