I used to love AT&T G3 wireless service, now it sucks. Before I visited relatives for Christmas, my connection would drop frequently. Not the whole connection, the AT&T local network was sending and fetching bits, racking up my usage, but they kept dropping their connection to the cloud.
The last call I made before departing was to their customer service, and I was informed they were working on equipment. Maybe they are trying to integrate 300 baud modems into their gear, because the service was sucking badly. It had gotten slow and the path to the internet had been going off and in for days.
During my one week stay in Newport News, VA, the service worked perfectly. It was "invisible," as it should be. When I returned to Arlington, the problems were still there in my home zip-code. I got sick of the constantly dropping gateway connection and called again. Guess what AT&T diagnosed as the problem? My computer! The tech said it was a Vista problem and he had me turn off IPv6 and kept saying that Vista makes the connection drop. No matter how many times I told him that I was not changing operating systems when I changed locations, he kept saying it was Vista. I asked him how on earth this machine, air-card and OS could work fine for one week in a different location, then have the same connection problems in NoVA all over again and he still insisted it was Vista.
The tech wasted 1.5 hours of my existence insisting that my operating system was the cause of the problem and at no time mentioned any network outages of any type. Somehow, for some people, every problem is Microsoft.
"The Future is About to Get a Little Darker for California as 100-Watt Light Bulb Ban Kicks in
Nick Gillespie | December 27, 2010
Come January 1, 2011, California will begin phasing out the legal sale and purchase of 100-watt incandescent light bulbs."
Don't they know that Easy-Bake Ovens require a 100w incandescent? They are forcing young women to cross State lines and smuggle bulbs in for their ovens!
Of the characters in Controlling Sarah, my guess is only Suzanne has an Easy-Bake oven.
"'I started talking to him and he just seemed kind of quiet and nerdy,' she told us in a phone interview. 'I didn't think he was sexy or anything. Just strangely alluring for a 19-year-old girl.' Assange flirted with her, showing off by explaining complex equations and joking about her mathematical ignorance."
Read more about the Assange version of courting, that most would call stalking, at the link.
Correcting history: The Air Vent released the Climate Gate emails and The Air Vent is not WikiLeaks. WikiLeaks did not release the climategate files first, The Air Vent did. The narrative that Assange is "fair" because he and his friends released the Hockey Stick emails, as well as the notion that his doctored, slanderous video of US Army pilots makes him a 'hero' is false, at best. It smacks of another media lie to prop up their narrative.
"Hollywood actor Wesley Snipes is likely to serve a three year jail sentence, after he was found guilty for tax payment irregularities. BBC states that the actor has been ordered to surrender himself to the police authorities at the earliest."
Just heard about this:
Geraldo Rivera is adamant that the FBI seduces terrorists into terrorist acts!
What a weirdo! In the latest close-call, four of Mohamed Hussain's buddies did the right thing. One did the best thing and reported Mohamed to the FBI. It does not look any different than when news people catch sexual predators and the potential victim is played by an adult actress. In this case, the potential victims were real and the weapon was impotent. Criminal complaint.
"Antonio Martinez, 21, of Baltimore appeared in federal court on Wednesday and was charged with attempting to explode a car bomb at a military recruiting station in Catonsville, Md.
There was no real bomb. It was all a setup arranged by undercover FBI sources and operatives posing as militant Muslims."
Yesterday, a CBS affiliate reported Martinez went by Mohamed O. Mohamud and Mohamed Hussain (I still prefer Mohamed O'Mohamud). More from CSM:
The operation nearly fell apart because of similarities to the Nov. 26 case in Portland. After seeing news accounts of the sting operation and arrest, Martinez phoned the same unnamed confidential source and expressed concern about an undercover FBI agent who was posing as an Afghan militant.
Martinez told the source that he needed to know “who this brother is. … I’m not falling for no B.S.,” according to the affidavit.
And -
“Every person Mr. Martinez asked to join in his scheme either declined to participate, tried to talk him out of it, or reported him to the FBI,” US Attorney Rod Rosenstein said in a statement. “There is no evidence that Mr. Martinez received direction or support from any other person.”
According to an affidavit the government was tipped to Martinez back in October, recording numerous conversations he allegedly had with an informant as well as an undercover agent over two months. In one conversation, Martinez said, "[W]e blow one recruiting center up, then we hit another one, there's no more recruiting centers in Maryland."
As evidence the government also cites Facebook postings including, "[T]he sword is cummin (sic) the reign of oppression is about 2 cease..."
"An official who was briefed on the arrest told AP on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to release the information that the person was given a phony bomb and was arrested after trying to detonate it.
U.S. law enforcement officials told CBS News that the case was 'similar to Portland.' Mohamed O. Mohamud is accused of trying to detonate a van during a Christmas tree lightening ceremony in Portland, but the FBI infiltrated the plot in its early stages and supplied Mohamud with fake explosives.
The Baltimore man is expected to be charged with attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction and was under surveillance by law enforcement for months.
Sources tell CBS that the man is 21 years old, a United States citizen and a convert to Islam."
The Wikileaks nation must be in tears about another headline getting in the way of Julian Assange news. Also, I suspect a typo. Mohamed O'Mohamud has such an IRA/Hamas fusion to it.
Israel rejects the notion as "too ludicrous" for comment; German woman killed near Sharm e-Sheikh, Russian tourists also mauled.
Courtesy climateprogress.org
Here are the best bits:
“What is being said about the Mossad throwing the deadly shark [in the sea] to hit tourism in Egypt is not out of the question, but it needs time to confirm,” South Sinai Gov. Muhammad Abdel Fadil Shousha was quoted as saying by the Egyptian state news site egynews.net.
Israeli officials said the claims were too ludicrous to comment on. Israel has issued an advisory warning against travel to Sinai due to plots against Israelis by terrorist groups linked to al-Qaida.
Form in your own mind which side is expressing the more rational position. The attack happened in the Red Sea, and according to Wikipedia there are 44 species that populate that body of water. Egypt has a bustling resort business there too.
Lets connect some dots: sharks, humans, tourist dollars, politics.
But Aviv Levy, a shark expert and the curator of the Underwater Observatory Marine Park in Eilat, said the Egyptians usually engaged in “smoke screening” when it came to shark attacks.
“Something is very strange here. The Egyptians are trying to hide it,” Levy told The Media Line. “This is very bad news for the sharks. It was strange after the first attacks last week and now even more so.”
Egyptian authorities launched a hunt for sharks after four Russian swimmers were mauled at theRed Searesort last week. Over the weekend, government conservation officials released photos of two captured sharks: an oceanic whitetip and a mako.
The mayor of Sharm e-Sheikh had announced that the beaches were reopened after authorities deemed that the sharks no longer posed a threat and that it was safe to go back into the waters. The sandy resort at the tip of the Sinai Peninsula is popular with European tourists and attracts over 3 million visitors a year.
Shark attacks in the Red Sea are not unheard of, or 'unprecedented' as the popular kids of the MSM would say if Obama were involved. Nope, suddenly trumping up charges against Israel are more important than covering up shark attacks for more tourist dollars, unless you can keep blaming Israel. You would think that a shark attack announcement, with Israel's Mossad standing as the accused, might put a dent in tourism to the Sinai. Not according to the Egyptians:
The governor of northern Sinai, outraged by an Israeli travel warning on the Egyptian peninsula issued earlier this week, claimed Saturday that the warning was an attempt to harm the Egyptian economy.
Abdel Fadil Shusha said Saturday morning that the situation in the area was quiet and secure and that Israel has become used to publishing such travel warnings during Egyptian holiday seasons since the 2004 Taba attacks.
At least he did not say that the warning was to keep Israelis away from the Mossad trained sharks. Maybe he missed the news from November, when Egypt arrested 25 people accused of plotting terrorist attacks against Israelis in the Sinai?
Not mentioned is the annual UN vote to declare a Palestinian state coming up soon.
The media wants to spin Obama's "compromise" on taxes and unemployment compensation as something Republicans painted him into a corner about. Nothing could be farther from the truth.
-No Republican holds a veto pen in the current federal government.
-Both houses of Congress are controlled by Democrats until the end of the year.
If Obama really wanted to raise taxes on "the wealthiest Americans" he could just let the Bush-era tax rates expire, allowing them to rise to Clinton-era rates. If the incoming Congress decides to change that, he could blame them when it happens. No, gentle reader, Obama really wanted to cut taxes for "the wealthy" and he will be taking credit for that, along with taking credit for the economic benefits that they generate, before his next election.
Actually, he is taking credit for it now. He mentioned how more jobs will be created and other nice things about keeping taxes where they are now. Obama seemed to be against these things before, but it must have been a ruse.
Obama: The No New Taxes president. I fully support him in this matter.
"Scotland Yard has confirmed that Julian Assange has been arrested by police in England.
A warrant had been processed by the UK's Serious Organised Crime Agency and was sent by the Metropolitan Police.
Mr Assange, believed to be residing in South-east England, is a suspect in a case in which two women claim they were sexually attacked by him when he visited Sweden in August this year.
The 39-year-old Australian was held when he attended a central London police station by appointment."
A bit of talk radio in the wee hours of the night last night reminded me a recent media myth. It is striking because it is easily found out, full documentation available on the internet. Sadly, there was better documentation available a few years ago.
The 2004, Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse in Iraq story is generally credited as "broken by"Seymour M. Hersh. False. The US Army Central Command broke the story themselves in January, 2004, long before Hersh wrote a single word about the affair.
CENTCOM briefed reporters, broadcast live, that an investigation of prisoner abuse was recently initiated. The announcement was ignored for months as the Army conducted their investigation. Hersh came along a few months later, with false accusations of a cover-up, and "broke" the story that he and his peers ignored for weeks.
"GNUALMAFUERTE writes
'As we mentioned before, NASA's Department of Astrobiology had an important announcement to make today. It looks like Gizmodo was right. You can watch the presentation online right now. It looks like the bacteria in question uses arsenic as a phosphorus replacement in its DNA.'"
The real news, from the great Ronald Bailey at reason, 'splains it better. The bacteria were not living an arsenic lifestyle until they were wrangled into the lab and were fed arsenic salts instead of potassium salts.
What does the big S in NASA stand for anyway? Yea, it is really close to the E on the keyboard.
For about two days I have been hearing of "censorship" at the National Portrait Gallery related to a video of ants crawling over a Jesus figurine. The "censorship" amounted to tax-paying patrons complaining about the tasteless excuse for art and associated complaints of wasting tax dollars. It is not like anybody mentioned drawing pictures and got enough death threats to go into hiding. No truck driver attacked the images as if they were of Mohamed giving oral pleasures to Jesus either. No, nothing like that, just some complaints about a public display of Jesus on public property. Good thing the artist did not show Jesus in a manger, then the tables would be turned!
I learned on "conservative" talk radio that the video is now on display in the front window of a Dupont Circle gallery, but I did not catch the name of the gallery. A Google news search for "jesus ants dupont" gave me this gem by Tyger Latham: Tis the season for controversy : Washington Blade – Gay News
Do not bother going there to see a still of the art in question, or even a link to the YouTube video of Fire in My Belly. Yes, this "censored" work is available online with a mouse click. It is supposed to be thirty minutes long, but that version is a few seconds over four minutes. YouTube requires you to sign in due to the adult nature of the video, there is a lot more to it than just ants crawling on a Jesus figurine. Brace for complaints of YouTube 'censorship' too, since you have to actually sign up for an account to see it there.
There is only one link in the article, and that link is for the CNS News articleThe Washington Blade is complaining about and they have a still from the video:
Fire in My Belly, courtesy CNS News
Do not bother going to the Blade article for other images from Hide/Seek either. You need to go to CNS for those too.
Brothers kissing at gunpoint, courtesy CNS.
Do not bother going to the Blade article looking for the new location of Fire in My Belly either. Transformer Gallery now displays Fire in My Belly on a video screen in the front window for all to see (1404 P Street Northwest, Washington D.C., DC 20005-1908), which I discovered by listening longer to "conservative" talk radio. Not as easy as going to YouTube, but if nobody knows it is on YouTube, the gallery might get a few more visitors. They do not know what censorship is either. Here is a sample:
In early response to the National Portrait Gallery and the Smithsonian Institution's censoring of David Wojnarowicz's 1987 video work A Fire in My Belly, from the current Hide/Seek exhibition, Transformer initiated a screening of the work in our storefront project space at 1404 P Street, NW, Washington, DC. The work currently on view is an approximately four minute excerpt of the original thirty-minute work in progress by the artist.
If you are interested in another generous portion of whine, go to the gallery link and read the rest there. Why they 'censored' more than twenty-six minutes from the work is anybody's guess. Mine guess is, they are 'boldly and bravely' using the approximately four minute YouTube version. The Smithsonian is not censoring this and neither is anybody else. They chose to remove that portion of the display and the Smithsonian was displaying the entire video. I have not heard of anything else being removed from Hide/Seek.
Do not bother going to the Blade article unless you are interested in wasting time reading a multi-paragraph, disingenuous whine about social conservatives wanting to keep art away from the masses. Do you know who else tried to do that? Yes, the Nazis are mentioned. In the piece, Tyger Latham closes with a 'Just like the Nazis' moment, dredging out Degenerate Art (entartete Kunst), brought to you by the National Socialist German Worker's Party, as a curious example of how Americans complaining about tasteless displays make them just like Nazis. Maybe Latham means CNS is like the Nazis because they will show you what the Washington Blade will not?
Latham does give a concise description of the video, at the end of paragraph two:
Fortunately, if you are anything like me, looking at “ants crawling over the image of Jesus on a crucifix” or “… a man’s genitals, a bowl of blood, and mummified humans” sounds pretty intriguing and not an entirely bad way to spend a Sunday afternoon.
Latham might find that a fun outing, but many would disagree. That material, and Latham's idea of fun, is better viewed/done in an adult bookstore, private club, or online. Perhaps Latham is not aware of those. Numerous fiction works at the BDSMlibrary (where I have one story posted and recently submitted another) contain that imagery. Mummification should be under one of the bondage categories.
The Libertarian lesson? If you want to display your art, do not go begging the government for permission. Private galleries are much more difficult to censor, and should not be censored. the Transformer Gallery is freely displaying the video that they chose to edit.
