#1 - I believe the '40 years ago' and 'when I was 8' portions were in reference to questions about Obama and William Ayers more than Obama and Wright.

William Ayers, the friend of Sen. Obama? Served on multiple boards (non-profits, IIRC) with Sen. Obama? And was identified as a friend by Sen. Obama's campaign, until it was discovered that he was believed to have committed crimes against the United States? link

Mr. Ayers, former member of the Weather Underground, was not someone Sen. Obama met/knew when he was anything resembling 8 years old.

Yay - Nothing is more wonderful than politics!

Seriously though, without trying to defend or defame the recent ABC "debate", there are a few fundamental differences between the Lincoln-Douglas debates - the candidates actually debated each other, they didn't try to score points and utter snappy sound-bites designed to appeal to certain demographics that only get their news via excerpts from the debates. Also, they were debating for a seat in the Senate (not President), and they were held in all but two districts in Illinois.

The Lincoln Douglas debate was also between two parties, not an internal political party squabble, and is a well-regarded model for political (and other) debate.

The ABC "debate" is more like an extended press conference with only two reporters and no editors.

Of course, I understand the "attempt" at humor, but I'm annoyed at the FUD stirred-up by the inaccuracies (Sen. Obama attended the church in question as a grown man of his own choice, got married there, and has his daughters attend as well - that was characterized as a church he attended 40 years ago in the "parody" piece - not even close, IMHO, but opinions vary.). Personally, I'm more troubled by his "crazy uncle" defense of Rev. Wright - the huge, un-spoken difference between a "crazy uncle" and his former pastor is that you don't choose your crazy uncle, no more than President Carter "choose" to have Billy Carter (see "Billy Beer") as a brother... Oprah managed to find another church in Chicago, why couldn't Sen. Obama?

Anyway, that's what makes politics o "wonderful" ;^)

See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lincoln-Douglas_debates_of_1858 for a pretty good background on the Lincoln Douglas debates of 1858.

I just hope the bad folks don't learn of the explosive power of Mentos and diet cola - esp. since they hand out diet cola for free on theplane, and Mentos, being a solid (well, non-liquid anyway), can be carried on a plane freely, limited only by carry-on baggage size limits...

Obligatory youtube links:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=lFf-kW1E0Tc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hKoB0MHVBvM&NR=1

Boing Boing Overloards - the link is busted - there appears to be an extra slash "/" before the URL. (That's what the error message seemed to indicate) Correct URL is:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/25181282@N04/2373834123/

Best use for a smiley face is on a cookie - a restaurant chain in the Western PA region uses a smiley cookie in their kid marketing, they also give kids a free sugar cookie (as opposed to a sugar-free cookie!) with their meals: https://secure.eatnpark.com/kids.asp

I have no connection to the restaurant chain, but they have been doing this for a very, very long time (I'd guess well over 20 years)...

You can order your own cookies here: https://secure.eatnpark.com/eshop/shop_product-detail.asp?ProductCode=4001

Boingers - I really like that - that will replace "Boing Boing Overloards" in my lexicon...

RE: #27 from RAISEDBYWOLVES:

It would be great if you could actually cite a couple of statistics, rather than just asserting it is so - just because you and your friends believe something doesn't make it so...

RE: #7 Christovir:

the 9/11 hijackers were in fact trained pilots

They took training, they weren't licensed as pilots and, in a proper sense weren't pilots.

It sounds neat, but you're off the mark, the pilot in question participated in training to learn the proper handling of a firearm in an airplane (and, one can only assume, other contexts). The fact that he was a pilot didn't qualify him to carry the hand gun, his successful completion of the training program did.

If all guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have hand guns

Since we can't guarantee that no guns are on the plane, doesn't it make sense that at least one good guy has a gun on the plane, in case there's a bad guy (or gal, or plural) with a gun on board?

NOTE: Boing Boing Overlords - thanks for fixing the "Preview" function - I complained about it's omission before, so now I praise it's inclusion!

I think that shows like this, smaller, local TV shows rediscovered and made available on outlets like YouTube.

Like the Bananna Splits, a "local" show writ large for a nation-wide audience:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=g2se2I70CJ0

and

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FtD4mn9CeH4

I expect many gems like this to surface in the coming years...

How long was the post open?

How many "more qualified" candidates were willing to take the cut in pay, the long, thankless hours and face the reality that the next president would, in all likelyhood replace them within 12 months of starting?

He maynot be your dream candidate, but I'm with Corey - he seems like a nice enough fellow, and I'll add two more things - he has credentials that qualify him for the job (IMHO, of course, opinions vary), and he will certainly be better than his predecessor (an empty chair)...

StormBunny?
EasterTrooper?

Not Darth Easter Bunny...

I may be wrong, because IANAL, but I remember hearing about something similar a few years ago, and the issue was that the actual portion that was protected was the indexing scheme - the unique page breaks, etc. It is true the underlying documents are public domain, but they aren't really usable in their raw form. The legal "industry" agreed to use one standard indexing methodology, and that was one owned by a book publisher.

I suspect others could scan the documents, but they couldn't use the same indexing mechanism. If all rights were given to a private organization, there must have been some compensation (free to Gov't in perpetuity for their own use?) - there must be some mechanisim to roll this back if need be.

Ken

Joseph Weizenbaum accomplished a fair bit more than that relatively simple pattern-matching program...

His NY Times Obituary is here.

Ken

thousands of Chinese security personnel today fired tear gas in an effort to scatter more than 600 monks taking part in the second day of rare street protests inside Tibet.

Either those are some bad-ass monks OR the security personnel are very ineffective if it takes multiple security guards per monk to clear the square. If we go with thousands of security personnel (call it two thousand, the minimum to justify the plural "thousands") and stick with the 600 monk count, that means it took just over 3 security personnel per monk to supress the demonstration.

Just an observation...

Ken

RE: #8 by Tits McGee:

I agree - remember,it's not the prostitution that got the police interested, it was the financial transactions. His bankers alerted the authorities about the transfers, and they dug up the prostitution the money was payment for.

While the prostitution angle sells more papers, he'll likely "go down" on a financial crime.

Ken

I like Charlie Sheen's comment on the topic of paying prostitutes: "I don't pay them for sex, I pay them to leave." Of course, he was discussing why a good-looking celebrity would pay prostitutes when he could (in theory/fantasy) have any woman he wanted...

Honestly though, a big part of paying big bucks to a hoker is for discretion, not technique - I guess...

Ken

RE: #27 POSTED BY ARTEMIA:

The idea that certain things are serious problems and that absolute answers must be implemented is usually a bad idea. Take, for example, the old canard that here in the US we need to inspect every shipping container because one of them might have something bad in it... Well, that utopian solution has been implemented in Hati, to great effect - all negative. As Artemia said, it is possible to test for everything, but without a reason and a backer it won't happen...

This could be the only "hazard" I've heard defined in parts per trillion... (the local news here said you'd have to drink millions, maybe trillions of glasses of water to get a "dose level" of any particular compound. That's a lot of glasses ;^)

I would not be suprised to find that this is actually a Pharma-soup created by people flushing their out-dated and/or unneeded phamaceuticals that the local water authority is not prepared to filter out...

An argument can be made for security concerns because revealing what they detected reveals what types of compounds thay are testing for and can detect. This is the same logic in play if you ever pause behind a monitor on a baggage X-ray machine at the airport - the security folks don't want you to know the limitations they are working with. You don't have to agree with the logic (I'm on the fence about it myself), but I can see where that line of thought comes from...

Ken

RE: Glittertrash:

You are kidding, right? This whole story is about his back-up feeding tube. You know, the spare, just-in-case feeding tube? How many extra spares was he supposed to bring with him, and what suggests to you that they wouldn't have 'needed' to open and contaminate every single one of them?

You raise an interesting point - what happened with his non-backup feeding tube? Was it not sterile and could be checked without opening the protective plastic wrap? So if that is the case, why would the backup need to be more sterile than the non-backup feeding tube? And if the the non-backup feeding tube is also sterile and wrapped in a similar fashion, then the TSA agent only "ruined" one (assuming that the tube *needs* to be sterile, based on comment #84 by justdisguy), leaving one tube sterile.

Let's remember this - thankfully, I've seen nothing to indicate the child suffered as a result of the TSA agent's actions - it is a theoretical risk he suffered.

RE: #79 Village Idiot:

And about the "where were the parents" thing, most people try to do the very best they can by their children. Sometimes that might not be good enough for you, I guess. I'm sure his parents were confident he would be fine and his trip wouldn't turn into a national news story and hell, I've seen much, much younger kids flying alone.

Most people do try to do the very best they can by ther children - agreed, but apparently these parents (or parent) apparently choose not to follow their 14 year-old child through the airport to the security checkpoint.

It's not about pleasing me, I'm happy the child was safe and didn't suffer any actual injury/harm as a result of this incident, but they are the ones saying the Gov't failed them, put their child at risk - sounds like the pot calling the kettle black. Do these parent know about pedophiles? Do they know about muggers/con men, were they concerned about thier child with the medical condition might have a problem on his "adventure" that could prevent him from communicating with medical personnel?

Because other parents put their younger (and presumably healthier) children on planes doesn't mean it makes sense to do the same with your child with a serious medical condition (and by my definition a feeding tube in and of itself is a serious medical condition all by itself, regardless the of why doctors had to add the tube in the first place).

"Two weeks ago" - wow, it took that long to find a TV station to pick up on the story?

"Contaminated the tube that he later needed" - I later needed the 20 oz. coke that was thrown out at the TSA check point... Did he use it?

"If I don't open it I can't let you on the plane" - What? I am 100% positive the TSA screener said something like "If I can't open it, you can't take it on the plane. Spend soem time with a 14 year-old, and you'll learn that stories morph as adults show interest in it (like a fishing story).

The kid never used the tube as far as I can tell(I'm at a loss as to why the kid kept it after it was opened), so if he needed it, and he used it the TSA agent put his life at risk? No. Why wouldn't the person that chooses to use a contaminated feeding tube be responsible? Honestly, if this is the only way the kid can eat, wouldn't you have a few spares?

I honestly think that what we have here is the 14 year-old's version of the story, which was shopped to the media for two weeks before someone took the bait, and the parents are pushing a political agenda through a simple mistake. Another screener might have made a different judgement call. A supervisor might have made a different call.

The big unanswered question in this whole issue is why did it take two weeks for this story to surface?

RE: #45 posted by Robert

Without a parent to act in that capacity, the kid was responsible for him/herself - period. I didn't put the child there, I didn't give the child the responsibility, the parents did. What amazes me is that everyone is so quick to jump on the TSA that they fail to wonder why: why did the child travel alone? Why did the child (knowing the risks) let the TSA agent open the packet? Why didn't the kid call for help (was the child also travelling without a cellphone)?

Unless this is an emancipated minor, there is someone responsible for the health and well-bing of this child - they failed in that role, IMHO.

Many have written about "TSA apologists" - what about the "parent apologists" that hold the parents blameless?

As for the wonderfulness question, I've seen many, many stories on BoingBoing that even while they discuss some horrible atrocity somewhere in the world, they manage to include some small bright spots, some glimmer of hope. Stories like this, while newsworthy, don't have even a small tiny bright spot (no matter who you blame for the child's infection - the un-yielding TSA, the absent parents, the passive 14 year-old, or the flying spaghetti monster). Where is the wonderfulness?

Re: #55 posted by Alexis

No person should have to make the choice of missing his flight and possibly having to sit in a 'holding cell' while the issue is "straightened out", and going ahead with plans without a necessary medical device. The fact that the TSA has the power to stop people with medical conditions from taking plane trips on a bureaucratic whim IS the problem.

No person, while claiming a medical problem should be given carte blanc to ignore any rules others have to follow.

So let me get this straight - since the folks that want to bring down planes and cause terror in the general public would never send a sick person on a plane to bring it down, we should let all go through? Of course, no person would have a feeding tube put in so they could get an explosive device on a plane to blow themself up - that's insane! No religious zealot would bring a baby along to let them get past the amount of liquid they could bring on a plane - ludicris!

Another fantastic posting by Cory regarding the TSA - hurrah!

Seriously, I agree with #28 posted by ekppp - what the heck were the parents thinking?

Why wasn't this post entitled "Parents risk health of child to keep scheduled flight plans"?

This kid is seriously ill, and they choose a form of transportation that involves dealing with simplistic, yet intrusive security measures.

Why didn't the parents simply say no? The trip was so important they (the parents) permitted their child to get infected rather than impact their plans.

Had they arranged for "medical transport" for the child, this all could have been avoided (but I suspect it would have been cost prohibitive).

When do parents accept responsibility and start making hard choices? Honestly, this isn't even a slightly hard choice, were it my kid, his/her health comes first - end of story.

Cory: I don't mean to get too personal, so please consider this a rhetorical question - if your child (heaven forbid) were to be in a similar condition, would you risk your child's health for the convienience of making your scheduled flight? I suspect the answer is no, yet you race to defend the parents that knowingly put their child's health at risk - they could have simply said no and had their baggage pulled from the plane. TSA siad this is the policy, make a choice, and they choose badly (IMHO).

I have to ask how a post like this jibes with the subtitle of this site: "A Directory of Wonderful Things" No matter which side of this issue you fall on (TSA or Parents were at fault) I can't find the "wonderfulness" of such postings - of course, your site, your policies (no argument from me), but have you considered that this may be outside the scope of this blog?

I'm just askin'

Ken

Thank goodness, it's been a few days since Cory railed against the TSA...

#32 - I suspect that this comes from the era when there was a festival of "what if" thinking just after 9/11/01, remember how there was tremendous concern when trucks went missing (esp. gas/oil trucks) because terrorists could crash them into pre-schools... Think of the children! It became a form of national pastime for a while.

Ken
Still looking for the post from Preview view, just like #16 above...

RE: #3 - correct!

Old news - they did this on the TV show Seinfeld, in an attempt to preserve a high-score on a Frogger machine...

RE: #12 JETSECSC:

Good point. I try to steer toward the sweet Venezuelan crude of Citgo.

Venezuela was the spark that created OPEC and remains a member today.

Citgo is not the answer to OPEC/Saudi problems - Venezuela was the main organizer/force behind OPEC and laid the ground work for our current record prices for oil (as long as you don't adjust the price for inflation).

RE: #7 posted by bobsyeruncle:

What kind of eff'd up administration observes that armed men trained as commercial airline pilots can cause catastrophic damage and decides to focus its attention on potential small quantities of liquid explosives concealed in toothpaste tubes and baby food jars?

The issue at hand is the fact that TSA figured out that while they were busy looking for "pre-made" bombs in peoples suitcases/carry-on baggage, they weren't looking for bomb components. One component that was easy to get by screeners is liquid explosives, so now they limit the amount of liquid a single person can carry on the plan in carry-on baggage.

f y cn gt pst n rrtnl htrd fr ll thngs TS, y mght gr tht ths s rsnbl sltn

So the couple packed what he and his wife recalled as five or six 2-ounce jars of Gerber’s baby food and 20 ounces of Similac baby formula in two sealed 8-ounce and two sealed 2-ounce plastic bottles.

Compared with:

“Evidently the woman had 10 bottles of premixed baby formula and 9 bottles/pouches of baby food,” a spokeswoman for the T.S.A., Ellen Howe, said, reading from a report the Chicago officers filed afterward.

And when asked about the discrepancy, Dr. Soni said the officers’ report exaggerated the quantity.

So, taking the Drs. count, that's 4 bottles of formula (2x 8 oz. and 2x 2 oz.) and say 6 baby food jars. For a 2 1/2 hour flight that is excessive, and it is a lot more than I can carry into the terminal (I can't find 4 oz. coke cans/bottles that I can carry past TSA). That amount of food is about a 12 hour day supply, and clearly exceeds the stated policy. The Drs. say the TSA agents took what, three bottles of food? That left them with three bottles of food and 20 oz. of formula - that sounds reasonable to me.

And the whole "I'm a doctor, I'll write the note" thing is just stupid - there is no medical reason to carry that much food, and having a doctor say "I'm worried the child might be stuckon a plane/in a terminal for an extended period, so I'm prescribing the parents bring a large qty. of food with them for the trip." What? Why couldn't I get a similar note to carry a six pack of beer through security?

RE: Deltadesu #23:

Because the people who decide are not the tech people, they're the people who'll pocket Microsoft's 3 mil.

The $3 Million was mostly in software, and while you could easily pocket it, it would be sort of pointless if you weren't technical...

RE: #8 cowicide:

Bill Gates thwarts many billions of dollars EVERY year to the funding of schools, hospitals, etc. with his illegal monopoly.

WTF are you smoking? How does MS/Bill Gates "twart" funding to schools? My local district pays a grand total of $64,000/year for licenses to run WinXP Pro, Office 2007 (all options included), Exchange servers for email, SQL Servers for running the district, Windows Server 2003 on all their servers, etc. Oh, and Office 2008 on the Macs in the district. We have about 1,000 PCs and about 750 Macs around my district. Now, I'm sure that you could argue that MS/Bill Gates is "extorting" that $64,000/year, but our kids get to use the tools used in mainstream business for less than the cost of one teacher/year. Seems pretty fair to me, actually.

I agree - Microsoft giving software/technology to the Library of Congress is not, by itself, cause for any concern at all. Without provocation you seem to be assuming that the LOC will implement a website that will lock-out non-Silverlight-capable browsers or it will only make documents available with DRM. There is no reason to think that is the case.

IIRC, the federal government has numerous regulations/requirements that websites be accessible to all, including the disabled and users of various platforms. To assume that a gift from a corporation will override those requirements is a bit of a stretch.

Ken

What about the Ruttles? Eric Idle and friends mocking The Beatles...

I can't believe that a simple hand gesture intended to pay tribute to "Floppy the Banjo Clown", famous rock star got so mis-understood...

Follow this link and learn how to be a mega-star

Ken

The 20 folks didn't complain, they were hunted down after they "voted" - the poll worker realized he made a mistake and tried to fix it. This leads me to only one, simple conclusion - you had a perfect storm of ignorance, where a stupid poll worker told stupid voters something that was incorrect. How do I know the poll worker was stupid? Because he tried to fix the problem.

RE: #7:

"She voted, war"

RE: #12:

"She voted - war"

You lose an important element of the message by further reducing it, many voted on the war (nearly all Senators, IIRC), but at least one voted against it (his name escapes me at the moment), so simply being party to the vote didn't lead to the war - you have to retain the indication of how she voted. "He voted, war" would be equally valid and correct, even if referring to a Senator that voted "No" on the war.

Personally, I dream of a Clinton/Obama, or Obama/Clinton ticket just because if they then lost, there would be endless bickering about which oppressed group America wasn't ready to put in power (blacks or women) and who held who back... Conversely, if they won, each would think they were the reason (she rode in on his coattails or vice-versa)...

That would be de-lightful to watch. but unfortunately it would be at the cost of a McCain presidency in all likelihood.

It is hooey that nobody reads anymore. People are reading more than ever now. They're just not reading newspapers.

Agreed - Amazon.com did more to increase reading in America (and I assume elsewhere, but I'll limit myself to America).

Newspapers are way too generic, with the great majority of stories being pulled from syndication sources and wire services. The only paper I read is my local weekly paper, everything else is online. Most papers are echo chambers interested in reinforcing the readers beliefs, they are not independent sources of new and information.

Years ago I decided that most newspaper writers have failed to see the difference between being on the front page (news story) and being on the Op-Ed page - they feel free to inject their opinions and views in every story - that's not how it's supposed to be, but that is what it has become.

Announcing you read the New York TImes or Washington Post have become declarations of party affiliation, not a sign of a superior intellect/interest in world events.

"Of course, that's just my opinion - I could be wrong. Aw hell, who wants pie?"

Sorry, last cool link for U.S. Currency - links to pictures of all the "large denomination" bills, including the $100,000 Federal Reserve Note.

First off, here is a definition of "Legal Tender" in US of A:

However, there is no Federal statute which mandates that private businesses must accept cash as a form of payment. Private businesses are free to develop their own policies on whether or not to accept cash unless there is a State law which says otherwise.

Next up, a link to a recent $1M U.S. Note counterfeit bill story in the news. (Link to another version of the same story, but, confusingly, as a youtube video.)

I also question the value of putting a 500 Euro bill out in common circulation (and by common I mean anyone can get them from a bank, not that everyone is carrying them).

And finally, the largest U.S. note was the $100,000 Federal Reserve note, according the the Bureau of Engraving and Printing:

The largest note ever printed by the Bureau of Engraving and Printing was the $100,000 Gold Certificate, Series 1934. These notes were printed from December 18, 1934 through January 9, 1935 and were issued by the Treasurer of the United States to Federal Reserve Banks only against an equal amount of gold bullion held by the Treasury. These notes were used for transactions between FRBs and were not circulated among the general public.

Follow-up to my earlier post (#39):

Link to proof that teenagers are dangerous and stupid (in case anyone doubted either)

RE: #37:

You Said:

Did you miss the part about being STRIP SEARCHED? They're teenage girls.

No, I didn't miss it - we can't give anyone a free pass when they enter "the system" (Child Protective Services) since no one knows their history. Should we assume because they are girls they couldn't be dangerous? Their cute accent eliminates the possibility they are dangerous? Their age?

Perhaps you wouldn't mind your teenage daughters being strip searched in a foreign country?

This isn't about choice, it's about reality - first off, I assume the search was done as is customary in the US, meaning by two guards, both female, and most likely in a private room. Were I in this situation I wouldn't want to have Pnemonia, I wouldn't want to be travelling without my spouse/adult companion, and I would have tried very hard (as I assume this mother did) to keep my children "out of the system".

Oh, and made to shower in front of guards. Just in case they had some tendencies...

The shower was not to wash away suicidal tendencies, it was to clean them up, it was standard procedure, and again, I assume it was done according to US policy where the guards monitoring the shower were women.

Here's an idea... ask the mother what should be done. Get a sitter and have the mother pay for it.

Let me get this straight, you think this mother would hand over her two teenage daughters to a complete stranger and pay that stranger instead of having the authorities take care of her children? IMHO, if the mother was able to speak/express an opinion/thought to the doctors/hospital administrator, she should have asked for her consulate or arranged for another adult to come from the UK to stay with the children (if she was going to be in the hospital for an extended period), if her expected hospital stay was to be brief (overnight), there is no reason the kids couldn't stay with her in the hospital room/waiting room (IMHO).

It's fun to second-guess everything after the fact with one side of the story, but you have assumed that the mother did everything right and the state did everything wrong, I think it is likely a mix of the two (both got things right and both got things wrong), but since we only have the mother's side - she probably left out a few details...

BTW - BoingBoing Overlords: Still working on that "preview" button thing?

Number 18 said:

Be humane?

Specifically, how?

• Send the kids home with a random hospital employee? - great, unless the employee that is so eager to help is a pedophile


• Put them on a plane back to U.K.? - What if mom says no?


• Put them up in a hotel with a babysitter? - At who's expense? Where can the government hire babysitters?


• Send them to Disneyland? - Again, who pays?

In reality, what could they do other than what they did? The real problem seems to be that the children were asked "horrible" questions about homicidal tendencies and gang memberships. What if they had homicidal tendencies and they acted on it in the orphanage? I believe you would be complaining that "those idiots in Child Protective Services didn't even ask if they were homicidal!"
Honestly, my initial reaction was "What, we have orphanages in the U.S.? I thought we got rid of those a long time ago (remember the dust up when Newt Gingrich suggested that maybe orphanages weren't so bad (back when it seemed that every few days another foster family was charged with child abuse).

When I surf the site with safari I don't see the video, but after dropping into Boot Camp WinXP session the video appears on the web page... Not sure how "alternate" browsers will behave on Mac platform (Opera, FIrefox, etc.), as I don't have them installed.

This seems familiar - what has changed/updated since November?

RE: #16 - Interesting, with all this "CLEARLY" obvious proof of Bush/Cheny lying AND a simple majority in both the House and Senate, still the only impeachment proceedings against them was held in a basement room at the Capitol. It seems Nancy Pelosi doesn't have the, uhm, inclination to give it a try. Based on my reading of the matter, it seems all she would need is a handful of Republican senators to vote with the Democrats against the President and impeach him (the House originates the Articles of Impeachment, but the Senate investigates and approves (or not) those articles)...

RE: #7 - Zuzu, Bill Clinton was not impeached for a blowjob or a cigar dildo, not even for having the poor taste to have his adventures at the office and not even for taking advantage of an employee - no, he was impeached for lying, under oath, in a federal court. Did he choose to lie about anything of a serious nature? No, he choose to lie about his sexual abuse of an intern at his office. Then his supporters called foul, since "everybody lies about sex" - maybe yes, maybe no, but only Bill Clinton, then-leader of the free world, did it in front of a camera in court and left a big gob of evidence on an other-wise plain blue dress in a plus size.

RE: #5 - If you watch the video carefully, you see the "spectacle" from several angles, so yes, I think there were several cameras.

RE: #8 - Mardi Gras is not a "prank", (as I understand) it is a celebration organized/supported/encouraged by the city of New Orleans - that is different from a couple of fellows throwing a (reported) half-million balls down a staircase.

RE: #12 - This was tagged as "Art, Video" not "Political" or "Protest", and the accused are referred to as "pranksters". In the revised context of this as an act of political protest, I still don't like it, but it is a *bit* more reasonable in that context.

RE: #14 - that isn't the clean-up crew, that is the ball dispensing group. They are brushing them down the stairs. If you look closely you'll see there is nothing in the area to actually clean the balls up with (like several really large trash cans).

RE: #14 (another point) - You just compared them to point out how different they are - I think you mean equate, not compare. I equate the two because both were apparently done "for the cameras".

RE: #2 - Great - I hadn't heard that before, thanks.

RE #2 - incumbent president? Hello, the election is over, I think you mean "The President and Vice President that beat that fellow from MA and his friend from SC".

Impeachment of the President? You mean like happened to the previous President who lied under oath in a federal court, and had to surrender his law license? Is that what you're talking about?

You know, Nixon was never impeached. Let that sink in for a minute. He stepped up and choose not to put the country though such a proceeding, Bill apparently thought Monica was worth it (how could that make Hillary feel?)...

And, as a final happy thought - these kind folks

Let me get this straight, someone drops a half a million pieces of hard colored plastic pieces of trash on a cultural monument and it's "cool"? I'd call it littering, and I'd demand that they be required to collect and count all the balls as punishment. What, they didn't have a plan for cleaning up the mess they made? Does that make it cooler? I guess I'm a bit "old school" when it comes to things like this, but I have a real problem when people do otherwise stupid things (like pole dance on a subway, beat the snot out of a stranger, etc.) and it's "OK" because they posted it on youtube... It was bad enough when people behaved like jerks, but now they think they'll get their 15 minutes of fame by posting their bad behavior on a web site.

I guess I'm just not "hip" any more (if I ever was)...

24,906 downloads and not one comment here - folks must have jumped right on the 428 pages, not taking time to leave a few mental crumbs for those who never read/heard of this book.

I realize that this may have been publicized elsewhere on the net, but surely some folks came from BoingBoing...

And really, how about adding a Post button on the preview page? It is sorta dumb to have to hit the back button to get a Post button to actually post your comment after previewing it.

RE: #19 Dan O'Huiginn:

Dan, I must take some of the blame for turning this into a "general pro/anti FOSS debate", but it wasn't intentional.

Back in post #8 I said:

My lesson from this book was that removing the profit motive and anything that resembles a deadline are not good for a software project.

and I stand behind my statement, but let me clarify my position. Chandler started out with a pile of money, rented office space, hired programmers, analysts, etc. and looked, for all the world to be a software company just like countless other start-ups in the San Francisco bay area. This "start-up" didn't have a profit motive or any kind of firm delivery schedule - these two distictions made the Chandler "project" stand out among it's software start-up peers. I contend that by removing those two "goals" this "project" took on way too many Dilbert-like qualities. For the Chandler "project", in the absence of a defined goal (ship date, for example), the process, not the product became the goal for those involved.

The vast majority of FOSS projects are (I believe)small projects focused on solving problems for the project leaders, and their ultimate popularity is based on the number of others that have the same problem AND how well the FOSS project addresses that problem/need.

RE# 15 - BURZ:

FOSS projects avoid defining their audiences, and avoid the professional processes that keep a project tracking its audience.

Well, as I understand it (and this is based on second-hand info, I've not participated in FOSS projects, aside from being an early beta tester for Red Hat Linux (back when SPARC was supported)) most FOSS packages (by number) are developed to scratch an individual's personal itch (according to Eric Raymond of "Cathedral and Bazaar" fame), but the larger, more popular FOSS projects (Linux, Apache, MySQL, etc.) have greater aspirations.

My point is/was, successful project (FOSS or commercial) need a "keeper of the one true vision", and that can be an individual or a small group of people - Chandler didn't have that - it had "goals" and "aspirations", not functional requirements that could be enumerated and tested against...

RE: #10 - Matthew Miller: Aren't we allowed to condemn a software project with no clearly defined goal (beyond "Scratch Mith Kapor's personal itch using open source software")?

The Chandler project just spins and spins around, without the pressure to deliver (at some point), there is no end in sight to the scope-creep and endless design changes.

Open Source software projects work best when there is a clearly-defined goal, a vision of the implementation, and a single guiding hand to steer the project toward it's goal. Many can contribute, but there needs to be a single instance of a design, not a seperate instance for each participant.

For example, the Linux Kernel has hundreds of contributors, but very few people "in charge" of what gets included (Linus + a half-dozen or so others?), each charged with a section that contributes toward a whole. Chandler has the goal of recreating Microsoft Exchange-type functionality without the pesky server in the middle - details to follow...

Honest to goodness - they are YEARS into this effort, and they are still in Beta? Is this Mr. Magoriums Software Emporium?

I think it is fair to say there is more than one cause for the weight problems in America/developed world. McDonalds is an easy target because when some group targets them, they get worldwide publicity (Yea! Beat up on the big mean corporation - they are the cause of all that is wrong today!), but say that changes in parenting, lethargy, video games, etc. are to blame, and no one cares, it doesn't register.

After I posted comment #8 (above), it occured to me - the Chandler project is like an accounting project that can't seem to commit to the decimal number system - as I recall, seemingly the only thing they didn't do in the course of getting Chandler to this "very early beta" level was invent their own OS and programming language environment.

For chrissakes, can't these peole ever actually deliver software?

This software was in beta when Dreaming in Code was released a year ago, and had been in development for at least three years before the book came out. I read the book a few months ago, and honestly, I was pissed when I got close to the end of the book and realized the only reason I had a book in my hands was because the publisher wanted to put it out - not that the project had even hit a major milestone.

My lesson from this book was that removing the profit motive and anything that resembles a deadline are not good for a software project. If an infinite number of monkeys on an infinite number of typewriters can recreate the works of Shakespeare, given enough time, how many monkeys on computers does it take to make a calendar application?

Tom Clancey had a novel (Debt of Honor) that described bringing down a jetliner by shining a laser light into the cockpit, blinding the flight crew while landing, causing the plane to crash on the runway.

This novel was written in the hey-day of consumer laser devices, though the laser in the story was much, much brighter than the one these kids used.

Not to go all closed-source on you, but have you considered evaluating (a href="http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/windowshomeserver/default.mspx">Windows Home Server? While it may not meet your needs (I assume your life is full of Mac & *nix-based systems, not Windows XP & Vista PCs), it provides a lot of similar functions to what you are looking for. Dynamic backups of connected machines, "intelligent" backups (same MP3 file on each PC results in only one copy on WHS box), and storage pool grows as drives are added, regardless of size (mixed sizes OK), some form of RAID employed for data protection in case drive fails, and provides for remote access not only to files on servers, but also to WinXP/Vista PCs on home network. It also serves up media files to UPnP players. You can also run many Windows applications on the server at the same time.

Again, this may not address your (Cory's) needs, but it addresses many of his stated needs for users on Windows platform. There is also a pretty active user-community, like this blog.

This is silly - a user makes a photo available on flickr.com of their dog in a hat, and also places the photo on their blog. A big corporation photoshops the image and uses it as a throw-away graphic element on a broadcast. The harm is what?

Oh yeah, there is a copyright on the blog that asserts ownership of the images (in general, there is no copyright assertion on the graphic, just the page that contains the image - a good lawyer could probably establish that the downloaded file is distinct from the blog site, but IANAL). Flickr.com has a TOU that leads me to believe that it is a fair-use (see section 9 of their Terms of Use).

The blogger should have included a copyright mark IN THE IMAGE (to make the assertion clear), and should not have posted the image elsewhere, where their "copyright" got muddied with the Terms of Use of the site employed (in this case, flickr.com). By posting the image on Flickr.com, they probably cost themselves their precious copyright protection.

The blogger should be flattered and move on with their life - to sit around and cry foul seems a bit silly to me. No, a lot silly.

Move along, nothing to see here.

Why is this back? Didn't we thoroughly flog this sickly horse last time?

Oh Please, re-read the quoted snippet from the original posting:

The idea, according to Jack Colley [the state's emergency management director], is to keep sex offenders and others who may be wanted by police off the same buses used by the most vulnerable during an evacuation: the elderly, disabled residents and children.

"This will allow us to help them evacuate," Colley said of sex offenders and others wanted for crimes. "We're not going to leave anyone."

Though the intent is to make sure vulnerable evacuees aren't victimized, Colley acknowledged that culling sex offenders and other criminals from a herd of evacuees during a potentially chaotic evacuation comes with plenty of challenges.

Picture two busses, one for elderly, disabled, and children (presumably with their parents), and another for convicted or others wanted for crimes.

As is clearly stated, no one would be left behind - it is about segregating the evacuees. The alternative would be the prospect of rabid news reports about a bus loaded with children and one or more convicted sex offender, and the potential for abuse on the long bus ride to their shelter...

Honestly, in an environment where everyone assumes the worst of government, and they are wrong no matter what they do.

The reality is, the busses will be broken down as follows, one will be for the Elderly, disabled, and children and adults that have documentation/identification papers that prove they have not been convicted of a crime or are not wanted for a crime, and the other will be for all adults without documentation/identity papers and those who do have papers and they are found to be convicted or suspected of a crime.

Also, instead of the evacuees being placed on busses willy-nilly, to be sorted out and families reunited once they are at the shelter.

PATRICK DODDS - the girl was sentenced for violating their law (they can do that, it's their country) - but, she was given a royal pardon by the King

Just an observation, but isn't this 4 minute clip copyright-protected? I mean it is part of a cinematic film that was released within the last year - I have to believe it is protected.

4 minutes is well beyond fair use (as I understand it)...

BILLOFWRITES: Not all Republicans march in lock-step and hold the same beliefs.

Without having a record of being against something, then changing his mind/position, you really can't accuse him of changing his mind.

That you leap from medical marijuanna to gay rights, etc. betrays an irrational hatred of republicans based on (apparently) emotional issues. It would be great if you could confine yourself to the topic of Medial Marijuanna.

It is interesting that you have an example of a republican that agrees with you (a democrat?), and your immediate reaction apparently is to jump all over him for things you don't agree on... You argue like a Linux Zealot.

RAISEDBYWOLVES - Agreed, the extent and demeanor of her interrogation was excessive in hindsight, but as I pointed out earlier, by her own admission she refused assistance at least twice. Most of her complaints were for things that were fair, given her circumstance (the questions, the phone, the restraints during travel, etc.), but when offered a chance to change her circumstance (by involving her embassy), she made bad choices.

As I read the blog and the article, the original reporter twisted the facts (claiming two days detention, but only held for one day/24 hours), and the extreme reactions are based on the bad reporting, not the facts as she presents them. The reporter (intentionally or not) twisted the facts to make it seem worse than it was - by my read, she was in shackles for about 3 hours (JFK -> NJ and NJ -> JFK), and she was fed during her 24 hours detention, but not as often as she felt she should.

How different this would have been if she had only taken the US gov't up on their initial offer to contact her Embassy when she was first detained. I fully suspect they could have negotiated a hasty retreat back to Iceland on the next flight for her - but we'll never know...

If you go to her translated blog, you'll see she was held for 24 hours, not 48 - you get to 24 hours because she was up for 24 hours before she arrived at JFK

You'll also see she was only handcuffed/shackled during transport, and as I speculated, at least one private "carrier" also handcuffs/shackles all prisoners in transport:

19. ARE ALL PRISONERS MOVED WITH HANDCUFFS? All prisoners moved by TransCor agents are moved in full restraints (waist chains, leg irons and handcuffs). We interconnect prisoners for additional security. All agents are fully trained on the appropriate use of traditional metal restraints, as well as The Grip restraint system. The Grip is a fabric restraint system utilized by TransCor in various transport situations. TransCor takes appropriate security precautions with juvenile offenders and pregnant females, as determined by company policy as applicable to individual cases.

From TransCor FAQ

She also said she was asked amazing questions - When did you have your last period (some women like to use various uniquely feminine products when they are mensturating), What do you believe in (we issue muslims Quarans, some people have specific dietary concerns, etc.), and have you ever tried to commit suicide (If I were responsible for watching someone who was so despondent (as she apparently was) I'd want to know if she was likely to try and kill herself)...

She had a bad experience, no argument from me, but it isn't the worst conceivable punishment. Much of what she complains about is very understandable given that she was held as a security risk and detained for interrogation, observation, and background check. She makes a big deal that she couldn't make a call, but if you read her blog she turned down calling the Icelandic Embassy when it was first offered (bad decision on her part), that she couldn't use her cell phone (prisoners don't get to use cell phones, only approved cell phones, where calls can be monitored), and when she later got a chance to use a phone again, she indicated she wanted to make an international call, and that was not possible from the prison pay phone - the Icelandic Embassy is a domestic call, she should have called them then. She made bad decisions during her bad experience, that's on her, not the US Government... (She turned down two chances to call her Embassy, I'd NEVER make that mistake were I detained in a foreign land)...

RAISEDBYWOLVES

Look, I don't know if you've ever dealt with immigration before. But the example of this lady's overstaying her visa could be quite similar to something I did in Germany, where I still live. I didn't have time for an appointment at the foreigner's bureau, because my case worker was on vacation for a month. I was seriously freaked out about the possibility of running around as an illegal for a whole month, but I was assured by the head of the bureau that it would be no problem for an American citizen. "Everybody does it."

I've known folks that got on the wrong side of immigration situations, but I've not gotten stung myself (closest I came to a personal immigration issue was when I nearly didn't have sufficent funds to buy my way out of Bermuda (they require $25/head to leave the island, and the payment must be in cash, I was out of cash and had to hit an ATM for sufficient green backs to come home)...

It's a shame that your appointment at immigration was "inconvienient" back in Germany, but the USA today is a much different place than Germany was a short while ago (whenver your visit was).

I'm guessing that if in 10 years, I were to be handcuffed and starved for 2 days because of this prior crime, I'd be pretty pissed off too.

She was handcuffed and shackled while she was being transported to the prison in NJ - not for 48 hours/two days. Personally, I believe federal prisoners are handcuffed/shackled during transport as Standard Operating Procedure - if I find that she was the only prisoner being transported in handcuffs/shackles, everyone else in the transport had neither I'll happily back off this point, but until then it sounds reasonable for a limited period.

She was denied food/water for 10 hours- not for 48 hours/two days - how often should Prisoners be fed? Let's assume a common meal plan would be breakfast at 8:00 AM, lunch at 12:00 Noon, and dinner at 6:00 PM - that means you go without food/water for about 11 hours (7:00 PM -> 8:00 AM). That is really quite common in many american homes...

As I said before, I feel some sort of interrogation was justified, but also conceded that this one may have gone too far:

an interrogation seems fair, but maybe this (one)was went to far...

Upon re-reading the original news article, it appears that the shackles were used only during transportation from JFK to a prison in NJ. Isn't it maybe, just possible, that everyone on the prison transport bus was in shackles as is SOP in federal prisoner transport cases.

As for the food and water thing, she wasn't denied food and water for her entire two days of incarceration, there were a couple times when she was hungry/thirsty and she couldn't get food/water. Hello, she was a prisoner, not an invited guest.

How many other Icelandic tourists were stopped and interrogated at the border from her flight - none? Well, maybe the fact that she was stopped had to do with her prior crimes, not a latent hatred for all things Icelandic...

Flow:

I've booked my February trip. I could have gone to the US - that was the original plan. Instead I'm going to Vietnam. A communist country.

That's great, I'm sure they'll appreciate your support...

Why? I won't get fingerprinted at the border. I won't have my face scanned. I won't have to take my shoes off for no reason by some gump who hasn't seen Doc Martins before (yes - I got that last time through LA). I won't get stopped for my accent, nor my religion.

USA - Land of the free indeed.

Fingerprinting - that's so bad?
Face scanning - where I come from we call that a picture, and when you hand them your passport they already take a picture of your old photo (in the passport), so why not let them have a more current photo?
Shoes off for no reason - What? I, and every other domestic or international passenger that enters a US airport has to take off their shoes. Your Doc Martens may make you special back home, but they are quite common in the US.
Accent or religious profiling - again, what? Without knowing your accent or religion (not that it really matters), but the TSA, AFAIK, is not able to profile passengers on any basis other than random numbers (i.e. every fifthe passenger is questioned). Do you really think we have a "racial profile" against Icelandic tourists?

It's fun to jump all over the US for interrogating someone that broke the law 10 years ago ("when it was quite common to do so"), but it really is misplaced. Ten years ago, they could have given her the same interrogation for overstaying her visit but they didn't do it (we were glad to get rid of her finally?), but when she attempted to return to the US, an interrogation seems fair, but maybe this was went to far...

Did she ask for a tourist visa before arriving in the US, or did she just assume we forgot about the last time she overstayed her welcome and we'd welcome her back?

"I am making a small book and needs fact in regard to End of the world."

Who is this fellow, JarJar Binks?

BTW, who knew JarJar Binks had this effect on small children...

You know, there were attempts to steal Lincoln's remains from his tomb...

Also, the patent held by Lincoln is described here

Might not be as cut-and-dry as it seems:

http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/12/07/blogger-roundup-the-cia-tape-affair/index.html?hp

(NY Times Blog overview)

What I like is that Jay Rockefeller, 4th is outraged, I say outraged! (in the tradition of Foghorn Leghorn) But he may have know about this several years ago... Convieniently he now says he can't speak to what he is briefed on ad head of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

(Queue Dana Carvey, "Church Lady")
How Con-vien-ient!
(Thanks Dana)

Ringmod76: Obviously the voting majority approves of Texas control of the US textbook market, or they'd do something about it. IF the majority of Texas voters opposed this, the politicians would get behind reform measures ASAP (to secure support from a mathematical majority of voters).

If the majority of opponents to this in Texas is outnumbered by the number of voting supportes, then Texas is getting the government it deserves.

She was asked to resign for her forwarding an email to coworkers at the Texas Education Association - these recipients were not friends out in the community (outside the TEA). SHe clearly violated the policy (as I read it, but IANAL and IDNLIT[0]).

BTW, to all - I've not supported Intelligent Design or Creationisim, I simply rasied some questions about Evolution. I wonder what everyone's reactions would be if the educator was fired for forwarding to her peers an email for a conference/speech that attempted to debunk Evolution? THAT would be OK because we all agree that is a wrong position? (It's always interesting to ask the reverse question...)

[0] IDNLIT - I Do Not Live In Texas

raisedbywolves: I thought it was the "fundies" that were home schoolng now, as they don't want their children in the "religion-free zone" of public education?

The examples ZAN detailed are examples of minor changes in a particular species and don't even hint as to how any organisim made the leap from living in the water to living on the land. Yes, I know we have water-based animals (fish) and land-based animals (humans), but where is the fish that suddenly "generated" a lung and could breathe on land? While changing color to match your surroundings is nice, that pales in comparison to the leap required to transition from land to sea (or vice-versa). The fact that the moths that can better hide themselves survive and multiply doesn't *prove* evolution of man from "ape", it does prove that it pays to blend into your surroundings ;^). The Amazon Mussel that got the harder shell proves that their predators prefer their mussels "smooth", not "crunchy""...

Evolution is an observable phenomena, but you can't simply say that since this species changed color, or that one got a harder shell that therefore proves that "we lost our tails, evolving up from little snails" (Devo lyric).

Email policies are serious business, as this article describes...

HYPERKINE: - Since Darwinism/Evolution was first discussed what animals have evolved since then to *prove* the theory? Where is the "Missing Link"? Darwinism/Evolution is still a theory in search of the final piece of the puzzle...

By law, state education officials must remain neutral on this topic, and the educators email sent from her official email account for a critical speaker on this topic most likely *was* grounds for termination.

Two Campaign volunteers in Iowa were also forced to resign over a "hoax" email that claims Barrack Obama is really a Muslim sleeper agent bent on destroying America once he becomes president. In both cases in Iowa the email was forwarded to the campaign workers peers on their campaign email accounts. Email policies are serious stuff, and this educator seems to have felt she was above the policy.

Re: lower ISP fees in denser areas

Simply put, the ISPs that own their facilities and infrastructures are regulated on a per-state basis, and costs are established that way.

Verizon, for example, can't set different rates within a regulated area.

If you think you can do it cheaper, go out, negotiate peering arrangements with other ISPs at a local access point, run regulated wires along your own right-of-ways, and drop pedestals (or, WiMax Access points) around your service area and provide 24x7, 365 service. It is not trivial to offer broadband in the US, nor is it cheap.

I get between 4 and 8 Megs download speed from Comcast for about $50 (including all taxes and fees, IIRC). I don't complain about that rate, except by comparison to the FiOS my neighbors in the next town get...

If americans *demanded* faster internet access, it would be rolled out, but (and this may be hard for many here to wrap their brains around), for most people, 4-8 Mb/sec is really fast, and $50 isn't too high a price (IMHO).

Note: There was an error on my previous post - the US has just over twice as many residents.

Also, a note to the Boing Boing Overlords I'm confused about the preview function on submissions, I don't see any way to commit my post once I preview it (This is on WinXP Pro SP2 with IE 7).

I find arguments comparing one country's internet access prices and speeds to those in the US very frustrating - it assumes that everything else in the equation is the same, and it's not.

Japan is 375 Thousand square kilometers (a bit smaller than California) and has 127 Million residents while the United States is just over 9 Million square kilometers (continental US) with just over 300 Million residents - let's see that makes the US about 25 times larger with just under twice as many residents. Yeah, that's a fair comparison.

In a Dollars per month per megabyte download speed the USA is in the top ten according to a recent assessment.

An interesting article in the Washington Post said:

Japan has surged ahead of the United States on the wings of better wire and more aggressive government regulation, industry analysts say. The copper wire used to hook up Japanese homes is newer and runs in shorter loops to telephone exchanges than in the United States. This is partly a matter of geography and demographics: Japan is relatively small, highly urbanized and densely populated. But better wire is also a legacy of American bombs, which razed much of urban Japan during World War II and led to a wholesale rewiring of the country.

It also discusses how increased federal regulation in Japan has helped the situation, while in the US the ISPs were being forced to open up their physical plants to their competitors. So what will it be, will we all move closer together or should we bomb our infrastructure to force replacement.

Seems reasonable, if you keep a few facts in mind:

- This is an entourage for a foreign visit - for domestic visits I am certain the entourage is smaller.

- If this were not for a political summit, there wouldn't need to be all those advisors.

- Minor politicians hop on Air Force 1 whenever there is an open seat, it is a highly coveted "perk" (just below Lincoln Bedroom, IMHO)

- I also wonder where the flight crews and other support staff are (i.e. mechanics, backup pilots for extended flights, etc.). Air Force 1, and by extension the support planes likely need to be able to stay aloft for days on end (refuel in air).

As for Vice President Cheney driving himself to work, what's the big deal - if he rode in the Suburban with his security detail he would reduce the size of the motorcade by exactly *one* car - his. All the other security would still be required. It is important to note that while the President has a Home Office, the Vice President is forced to commute to the White House from his house out by Embassy Row...

This is a case of (most likely) accurate information on something you've likely never thought about before causing a strong emotional reaction without taking a moment to put it in perspective...

Short of eBay, where would one find *reasonable* reel-to-reel decks? Just curious, but my local Circuit City doesn't have any in stock...

First, let's agree that content and page counts are two different things - as I said above, I think the web site did serve up those pages (i.e. bot attacks or other concerted efforts to skew page counts on the site), so if they modified the numbers you'd likely claim foul for having changed them.

As for the Larry Craig Bio, it wasn't horribly off from what I remember of the events. It should mention that there actually was a long period of time before the incident and his guilty plea. The link to support the claim he plead guilty to make his flight isn't supported by the documents linked to. I could see how an unsophisticated reader could draw that conclusion from the transcript, but that is not what happened...

In the end, as another poster suggested, I think Conservapedia is the "brainchild" of a person with an agenda to put forth their version/views on matters relating to his political belief - kinda like a blog. Maybe his crime is that he is building on the "pedia" brand gained an air of authority by adopting their software to accomplish their goals. If the articles were in a WordPress blog, would they be as offensive - sure, but you'd put them down as opinions and move on (I suspect).

It is interesting to me that when you noticed an inaccuracy in the article on Larry Craig, rather than edit the entry to reflect the true nature of Larry Craig's biography, you simply let it stand and mock the web site. I thought the point of the "pedia" software and the sites that are based on it is that a they are a means for a community to come together and through collective effort create a resource that is as accurate and complete as possible, while freely available for all to benefit from.

How does it reflect on you that once you noted the errors you choose to let the inaccuracy stand? For myself, I'm going to propose edits to the entry to try and correct that inaccuracy, then I'll probably never visit Conservapedia again, as it holds no interest for me...

This post upset me because of the tone of the write-up in the face of unbelievable page view counts. This kind of post is usually put up when a Blogger either thinks the post is funny, but not true (like, a link to an article in The Weekly World News (Wikipedia Article) or The National Enquirer Wikipedia Article) OR it reinforces some previously-held belief by the author and they didn't think to question it (it just seems so right, how can it be wrong?). MarkF's tone in the original posting, he reluctance to alter the post based on several reasonable arguments from BoingBoing readers causes me to think that for MarkF this fell into the latter category (reinfocing previously held beliefs).

It is interesting that the pages that have high page counts are the pages that have "stand alone" pages on the conservapedia servers, almost as if the users went down the pages and clicked all the conservapedia links... (or all the links, and we are only seeing high traffic levels for the pages on conservipedia)

If these numbers are true, then my interpretation is that there are an astounding number of gay (or gay-curious) conservatives that suffer from debilitating Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) and have to keep refreshing the pages... Those poor, curious yet forgetful, conservapedia readers keep forgetting what they just learned about "Gay Bowel Syndrome" and have to reload the page.

But of course, the numbers aren't real - I suspect the numbers are accurate (they did serve those pages that many times), but I don't think there is a "secret conservative cabal" that is obsesively researching "Homosexual Relationships and domestic abuse"...

It is also interesting that 10 pages generated 4.5 Million page views, out of their 37 Million page views, or about 12% of all traffic.

12% of the traffic is generated by 10 of the 45 thousand pages - ten. I won't bother to calculate the percentage those ten pages represent of the entire site...

I wonder how many pages at the site have page view count equal to the number of edits (no readers, just authors/editors reviewing/updating pages)?

Finally, I am troubled that something so unbelievable was passed off as fact (for a while) because it apparently resonated with an animosity/suspicion/hatred for people with differing beliefs. The original post, the one on BoingBoing homepage, didn't give a hint that the author thought this could be false, and in fact the author fought the suggestion they might be false for over 8 hours, based, apparently, on the belief that it must be true, I found it on the Internet...

MarkF - For now, the only hard data I have are the stats Conservapedia itself has on its page. I'm waiting for them (or) someone else to send me something that shows me those stats are wrong.

I took advantage of the OLPC "B1G1" offer the other day, and my reason were all but altruistic. The laptop as supplied in the USA will include not only a $200 tax deduction (for the donated laptop), but 12 months of unlimited T-Mobile Hot Spot access.

The T-Mobile access is usable on any device (not tied to the OLPC device), and has a real world value of $360 ($30 x 12 months) - coupled with the tax deduction the laptop is *almost* free (assuming you have a need/use for the T-Mobile access).

I got it because I want to play with it, and I'm willing to pay an obvious premium to be an early adopter (and it may be the only way I'll get one, since I was unfortunate enough to be born in the a developed country ;^). Maybe Steve Jobs/Apple should have done something similar with the iPhone - Pay $800, and you'll get one phone for yourself, and you'll sponsor an iPhone for a deserving person in a developing country!

Hey, it's just a thought...

Ken

Thanks for pointing out the relevent section of the bill (BTW, it is on page 411-412 of the document, as counted by the page numbers in the document).

I still only see the word "plan" not implement, and I think the actual poison here is minimal. Do I think the Federal Gov't should be dictating policy like this from their position, no - but I suspect this is not the first or last time this will be done.

It is honestly hard to argue this topic without sounding like you support student rights to download copyrighted material without permission...

Ken

For those interested, the actual bill is linked here (PDF).

After reviewing the bill (by scanning for keywords, it is over 700 pages!) I found the following:

Page 381-382 (Sec. 487.) - Requiring schools to list how they communicate the illegality of peer-to-peer file sharing of copyrighted material)

On page 476, right between a discription of teacher prep program and fire safety, there is this mention of:

"(10)the support of efforts to establish pilot programs and initiatives to help college campuses to reduce illegal downloading of copyrighted content, in order to improve the security and integrity of campus computer networks and save bandwidth costs;"

I couldn't find any mention in the bill of any requirement for a school to enroll in a Napster (or other) music service...

Honestly, as I read the bill, it appears the solution to this "problem" might be as simple as the addition of text similar to the following on every network user sign-in screen and user ID request form:

"It is a crime to download copyrighted materials and any users of (the school's) computer network found guilty of such activity will be held responsible for their actions."

Oh, and it might be good to put it in the Student Handbook as well. Those simple steps should meet the requirements of this bill.

Now, will they take the same position on under age drinking???

Ken

Wait a minute, it is the entire set of postings starting with the "Best of Make" posting on the home page. I think you have one extra "" tag in the beginning of the Make posting...

Ken

Why is the ENTIRE posting a hot link?

Ken

I just re-read the original article, and honestly this man is making a mountain out of a mole hill. He's travelled to the US twice, and got "detained" both times. What is his problem? When he gets to the UK, does he breeze through the airport without so much as a second glance?

Tubman - is it inconcievable that he was stopped for nothing more than being the n-th passenger through the gate? Maybe he buys his tickets last-minute? Maybe he had little luggage? Paid for his ticket with cash? These and many other reasons could make a traveller a "person of interest" and have nothing to do with his profession, expertise, elected position, etc.

JJASPER - The only way random searches are effective is if no one is exempt. Are you seriously thinking that elected officials should be exempt from screening?

The P.M. suffers from a superiority complex ("I shouldn't be detained/interviewed/have my luggage searched because I am a PM in the UK") - get over yourself, if grandma, toddlers, and famous politicians in the US are subject to random inspection, why not him? If the TSA/Gov't was able to employ profiling, he would have gone through, but without it he gets stuck in the same muck as the hoi-paloi in coach...

Ken

Silly British PM, we DO treat you like we treat our Senators and congressmen:

Ted Kennedy: http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=940DE7DF163EF933A1575BC0A9629C8B63

The real question, not addressed in the pull quotes in the posting is this: "What is it in his official background that causes him to be considered a person of interest, and what has he done to mitigate/eliminate that since his previous visit?"

One popular definition of insanity is "doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting the results to be different" - I venture to say this PM meets this "conversational" definition of insanity...

Ken

JTF has just reinforced my assertion - "What has ticked off MIT students and much of the public is the way the State Police, instead of recognizing an LED breadboard and releasing her, arrested Star Simpson"

As I read that statement it sounds like the MIT student (population?) assume/expect that everyone knows that a solderless breadboard is a harmless device. Trust me, that is not the case (in my experience).

I am a little reluctant (biased?) against giving an MIT student a pass due to her being "unsophisticated" - she managed to get herself through high school and into one of the most prestegious universities in the country - to claim she had no idea requires a "willing suspension of disbelief" IMHO.

A few years ago I travelled into Heathrow airport, and I found myself completely at a loss as to what to do with a candy wrapper while walking around the airport. Out of desperation I asked one of the "bobbies" (who happened to be carrying an automatic weapon), and he politely pointed out that they don't have public trash cans in the airport anymore. That srtuck me as odd, till I remembered that a while earlier folks used to toss bombs in trash cans in pulic places to make their point. *I* could be considered naive, being from another country, but Star had to fly (I assume) from her home in Hawaii to MA to attend college, so she *had* to be aware of the security precautions in-place at international airports like Logan International Airport.

A couple things, first off, the MIT student put the circuitry on her clothes to be noticed, to stand out from the crowd, and to make an impression - that isn't what you want to do in an airport these days (right or wrong, that's the reality).

Second, I don't understand what the "clay" near her circuit board was for, if not to look like platic explosives to the un-trained eye?

Finally, regarding the WW II chocolate bar that was actually a grenade - it wouldn't get through security (OK, OK, it *shouldn't* get through security) since it was made of metal (it *looked* like a chocolate bar) it would have raised suspicions at the X-Ray machine/metal detectors of a modern airport, and the actual *explosives* distiguish this choco-grenade from a real chocolate bar, and (again, in theory) a bomb-sniffing dog/device would detect it as opposed to a human TSA/security agent...

I think Star (the MIT student, if I have her name right) is what we used to call "self-centered" she apparently thought she was so clever, but failed to consider the effect her decision would have on others...

Sherrif Joe Arpaio was most definitely not in attendence - he's the sheriff that oversees what may be the world's largest tent prison in Maricopa County New Mexico, USA:

http://www.cnn.com/US/9907/27/tough.sheriff/

Ken

This immediately brought to mind a great musical sequence from SNL (same era) by Frank Zappa, incl. Don Pardo voice over:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=TtAjotVrYpc

And it's close runner-up, Andy Kaufman:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=AHG9jp6s1OI

SNL *used* to be GREAT! (Now it's occasionally funny)

Laurie Anderson Drum Suit:

http://www.newmusicbox.org/page.nmbx?id=06tp09

That was back in the wild, crazy 80's...

She also has a violin with a tape head in the bridge and a "sample" on the bow (instead of horse hair), and the sample played as she "played" the violin...