December 2005

There were 35 posts published in December 2005 (this is page 2 of 4).

Weblogs and privacy

There is debate about whether news organizations should publish URLs to weblogs of suspects and victims of this case. My take is that any information online and available publicly is fair game. Among their many other investigation tools, the media can use Internet search engines just as easily as their audience can.

I know I’ve written some stupid stuff on my own weblog. People may not approve of some of it, and that’s fine. I would rather post what I’m thinking and have an honest conversation with my readers rather than put up a front. I have opinions, some of which are not shared by many others. That’s fine by me. By being honest in my writing, I have brought others around to my way of thinking. Topics which can’t easily be discussed in weblogs and forums can be discussed with a great deal of freedom in weblogs and online forums. And sometimes one finds agreement from unexpected corners.

We are all more alike than we care to admit. Weblogs help to emphasize that point.

I also know enough not to post everything. Some things are still nobody’s business.

So thanks for reading, all fourteen of you. I hope to make your time spent here worthwhile.

Diebold Pulls Out of North Carolina!

I just discovered that yesterday Diebold won’t sell election systems in North Carolina. Diebold, whose voting machines were responsible for some odd behavior during past elections, could not guarantee their software as required by law.

I am quite happy to see that this company – an untrustworthy one, in my opinion – has given up trying to talk its way around our new voting machine law. On the other hand, Diebold did “helpfully” offer its services to gut our law so that it could once again sell its crooked voting machines here in the future.

Thanks to all who help fight this battle. Hooray for verifiable elections!

Get Those Girls A Sammich!

Guys have a saying they use when discussing a woman who was attractive but who has some minor fault. The conversation will usually end with “but I wouldn’t kick her out of bed for eating crackers.” Now that I’m married I haven’t said that in a while. If I were still single, though, there’s a group I would kick out of bed for eating crackers: what passes for today’s supermodels.

I’d boot them to the floor because crackers aren’t enough: they need sammiches. And in a big way!

My friend Matt sent me an issue of Vanity Fair with Eastern European supermodels on the cover. I know Russia isn’t exactly prospering now, and the Babushka look has gone out of style. But, please, can’t these girls find something to eat?

Kate Moss is a good example. That’s beauty? She’s skin and bones! There’s no room for beauty there!

Call me old school, but I prefer women with a little shape to them. Women like Elle MacPherson, Christie Brinkley, and Elizabeth Hurley, for starters. Preferably women with a brain. Now that’s what I call attractive!

This new, “I’m-on-heroin” look is pretty lame. Get those girls a sammich!

A Christmas of Giving

Rather than buy each other expensive gifts this Christmas, Kelly and I decided to donate that money instead to the charities of our choice. We figure we have enough stuff as it is. Why not make someone else’s life better?

I hope it will begin a tradition in our family.

Opportunity Calling

Now that energy prices have skyrocketed, I’ve been considering how to reduce the large bill I get for mobile phone service. It’s a larger monthly payment than our water service, our Internet service, and our phone service combined. Some months it is even higher than our electrical bill. And for what? We’ve got upteen hundred minutes per month for which we use perhaps 300 at most. Personally, I use on average around 100 voice minutes a month. (Most of my billed minutes are packet minutes, a.k.a. “PCS Vision.” I pay an extra $15 per month for the privilege of running up my overall minutes to get tortoise-like Internet speeds on a crappy phone web browser.)

There’s clearly a lot of cheaper plans out there. I can live without the PCS Vision, perhaps returning to the WiFi connectivity reseller Boingo for my Internet fix. Focusing simply on voice then, the choices are many.

Yesterday I discovered MVNOs, a concept written up in last month’s Forbes. An MVNO is a Mobile Virtual Network Operator – a company which buys minutes wholesale from the major mobile phone services and resells them to its own customers. Virgin Mobile has caught my eye before with their prominent displays in Best Buy. Their plans would save me money and I wouldn’t be giving up any coverage as they use the same Sprint PCS network that I already use. I was just about to give them a try when I thought to look on the Internets to see what else was out there.

It turns out there is a lot! There are lists of MVNOs at MobileIn, and CNet, among others. It looks like a hot market as the list is obviously growing. At the moment, I’m considering Liberty Wireless or one of the other Sprint resellers. An initial look shows I could shave fifty bucks off my monthly mobile phone bill – money which could then go to more interesting and productive uses.

The MVNO market is a market to keep an eye on. It could finally bring some innovation to a stodgy, boring U.S. wireless market.

Compromised: Clinton, Bush and the CIA

I’ve long had suspicions about how national politics really work. It obvious there is a lot going on behind the scenes. There were a number of scandals in the 1980s and early 1990s which got swept under the rug.

I’ve been reading about these scandals in the book Compromised: Clinton, Bush and the CIA by Terry Reed. Reed claims to have been a flight instructor for Contra pilots based outside of Mena, Arkansas in the mid-80s. His job was to train these pilots to fly dangerous resupply missions over the jungles of Nicaragua. While Reed was there, he discovered the planes which were flying out with guns, were flying back with cocaine! It was then that he decided to quit the mission. Along the way, he learned some interesting things about the Clinton and Bush families.

Reed was put on trial on trumped up mail fraud charges, allegedly set up by Clinton’s Arkansas State Police chief of security, Buddy Young. The government’s case fell apart and Reed was acquitted, but not before he was dragged through a grueling legal process. As he prepared to file suit against Young and Arkansas for libel – a case which would have uncovered some interesting relevations about Clinton and Bush – he was smeared in a Time magazine hatchet job.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. Reed’s book is full of copies of receipts from the meetings he attended, as well as court documents, photographs, and other items. While few show who was at those meetings, they do seem to corroborate his accounts. The way various government agencies denied Reed’s defense discovery requests with the excuse of “national security” seems to corroborate his accounts as well.

The long and short of it is that Reed (and his murdered partner, Buddy Seal) discovered that the “Bush boys” – Jeb and George W. – got caught trafficking in cocaine. As a result, George Sr. delivers some coke to the Clinton Governor’s mansion in an effort to create some dirt on Clinton. Clinton loaned out his state for CIA use.

Popping The Cap With A Rogue IPA

With Kelly and the kids up in Virginia, I had no bedtime story duties and so decided to enjoy a malt beverage with my dinner. An inspection of the fridge revealed no Saranac Pale Ale or Pete’s Wicked Ale inside, so I reached for the sole remaining beer bottle: the Rogue Imperial IPA. All I can say is “wow!”

I poured myself half a pint of the Rogue and sipped it as I ate. The flavor was intense: hoppy and flavorful. I could tell this was no ordinary beer. A look at the bottle confirmed it was no ordinary beer: 9.5% alcohol by volume. Good thing I stopped at a half pint! (Also, its a good thing it comes in a resealable bottle. Nice thinking, guys).

So this is what this year’s Pop The Cap initiative has wrought. I’ll drink to that!

Trolley Folly

N&O reporter Ryan Teague Beckwith wrote the article Sunday I’ve been meaning to write for years now. It was a look back to the days Raleigh was trolley town. From the 1880’s to 1930’s, tracks ran throughout downtown, serving Cameron Park, Glenwood Avenue, and other destinations.

Problems Beckwith cite with the service include it being too hot or cold at times. Well, duh! It’s not like your horse-drawn buggy had a heater in it, either. People made do.

I also don’t like how Beckwith blames the trolley for feeding segregationist policies. While segregation is wrong, I think the blame lies on the segregationists, rather than the trolley. The trolley did far too much good.

In 1933, the tracks were shut down and public transportation gained all the charm of “taking the bus.” City development changed drastically as a result. Think of how people-friendly the city would be if we still had those tracks.

I first became interested in the old trolley system when working on my shrine to the old Raleigh Municipal Airport. I found the old pictures of trolleys I found in the N.C. State Archives and History to be captivating. Perhaps one day I’ll create a page about the trolleys similar to my RaleighMuni pages.