| In the "how fscking stupid can you be?" category |
[May. 11th, 2008|10:07 pm] |
A conservative legal-advocacy group is trying to get together a test-case to try to get the law barring non-profits, including churches, ruled unconstitutional.
Now, they're enlisting liberal as well as conservative pastors in this remarkable bit of stupidity, so it's equal-opportunity dumb.
Though, to my mind, the money quote is this: "Some legal scholars are hoping for a new test case. Lloyd Hitoshi Mayer, a law professor at the University of Notre Dame, says a church might make a successful claim that the federal government is burdening the free exercise of religion and cannot do so without a compelling state interest."
If you wanted a "compelling state interest", I would be quite happy to say "so we don't turn into Iran writ large", and leave it at that. |
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| The evil that men do, part 2 |
[May. 9th, 2008|09:42 pm] |
Dunno if you've had any experience with Facebook. My interactions have been... less than satisfactory.
Though the look on the security guard's face was priceless. |
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| The evil that men do, part 1 |
[May. 9th, 2008|09:32 pm] |
| [ | Tags | | | cooking | ] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| | accomplished | ] |
Kelly and I wound up making a couple cakes for a party at my mom's:
Carrot cake:
Devil's Food cake:
Yes, I've been experimenting with fondant. Sue me. |
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| I hate spammers |
[May. 9th, 2008|10:29 am] |
With a passion. I mean, I can deal with the daily load of 5-600 spam that I get to my personal email.
But this morning, I got to deal with the additional 500 or so bouncebacks because some jackass decided to use my postmaster address as the return address on a bunch of spam. So all the bouncebacks landed in my inbox.
Can we please just shoot them? Make it a capital offense, and shoot the little dirtbags?
The worst part? Looks like they're a Chinese operation. I get more administrative headaches out of China than the rest of the world combined.
Gonna have to figure out a solution to this. I'm starting to think that hunting parties might be the way to go. |
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| And something from Iraq to celebrate |
[May. 8th, 2008|07:43 pm] |
It appears that Al Quaeda in Iraq's head, Abu Ayyub al-Masri, has been picked up in an Iraqi police commando operation.
Love to find out what those guys drink, and send 'em a case. They sure earned it. |
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| Interesting news about Iran... |
[May. 8th, 2008|07:20 pm] |
Several things, in no particular order:
First, it appears that Iran is pumping more oil than there's refinery capacity for, to the point where they've chartered tankers to act as floating storage for 26 million barrels of oil. And this isn't the first time they've done it, either.
On a related note, I've been wondering why the DoD was stocking up the US strategic oil reserve, given current oil prices. Now I'm even more curious.
Second, recent-manufacture (circa 2007) Iranian heavy weapons are being found in Iraq, and the Iraqi government is none too happy about it. Worth noting is that the rocket system in question is a truck-mobile artillery MRL. That's equivalent to the US military "losing" a 155mm howitzer, and it turning up in a drug lord's arsenal in Mexico. It's a pretty major "oops", and VERY hard to explain away as "rogue elements", rather than official government policy.
Worth paying attention to is the fact that the Iraqi government is getting sick and tired of all this crap coming across the border from Iran, especially after a delegation went to Iran to politely request that the Iranians cut it out, and they came back empty handed.
Third, Iran is also stirring things up in Lebanon. Hezbollah has gone on the war path. Love the irony of this, btw. The only thing I'm wondering is when they'll start trying to drag Israel back in, for a repeat of the 2006 war.
Fourth, a really interesting set of coincidences and movements, mostly of naval assets, that might support limited operations against maritime targets towards the end of summer.
Now, bear in mind that most of this is just "interesting observations". There's nothing solid, and no real data to work with.
(h/t to Instapundit for some of this.) |
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| Everybody remember Columbia's little excursion into Peru... |
[May. 5th, 2008|10:50 pm] |
bagging Raul Reyes (FARC's "foreign minister"), and his laptop, chock full of interesting data?
Well, it appears that the laptop, and the data on it, was legit.
Which means the stuff found on it really DOES implicate Chavez in fomenting a war with his neighbor. And it implicates Correa as well.
Anybody who can support that "socialist" sack of shit at that point has some 'splaining to do.
(h/t to InstaPundit) |
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| Oh, THIS is interesting |
[May. 1st, 2008|11:17 pm] |
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080502/wl_nm/china_disease_dc
Nasty contact-spread virus running around China. There's a hair under 3000 cases right now. The truly cute part is that it started spreading in early March, but the Chinese government has only now gotten around to releasing any information. |
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| Carrier |
[May. 1st, 2008|12:06 am] |
It's a hellaciously good series. Though I have to admit, my favorite part so far was when they got into religions aboard the Nimitz, and they even included a Wiccan group. I also thought it quite cool that the carrier's shipboard chaplain is a Jesuit.
Interesting, very interesting. If you aren't watching this, you should be. It's a really good look at routine shipboard life on a deployed carrier - good and bad. |
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| Earthquake WTF? |
[Apr. 30th, 2008|01:35 am] |
So, this week there's been a spate of earthquakes near Reno, a 5.2 near Eureka, and more. Look at this map - California looks like it's been rung like a bell.
The 24-hour aftershock forecast map is brighter than I've ever seen it. I find especially interesting that hot spot below Parkfield.
For some reason, the vibe I get from this is "a volcano's warming up." Given that there's a spike in activity in Trinity/Shasta, and a spike near Reno, _if_ that prediction is correct then I'd expect to see something happen either at Mt. Shasta or, more likely, Mt. Lassen. |
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| I'm not sure who needs to be bombed more... |
[Apr. 29th, 2008|06:42 pm] |
Boston, New Mexico, or the /S/B/C AT&T residential lines office in Mountain View.
But all three have their points at the moment.
- Boston, where those darling people decided to rewrite the terms of the underlying note just as we went to escrow (you don't TRIPLE a partial release clause one day out from escrow without talking about. C'mon, guys - here a quarter, buy a whole pack of clues).
- New Mexico, just for general principles and because I'm sure they'll find another new way to mess up.
- /S/B/C AT&T for (a) dropping the line the office DSL is on, (b) taking a full day to bring it back up, then (c) allocating it to a new circuit so Covad can't just relight the circuit.
Idjits, all.
On a related note, I need to learn how to operate a lathe, so I can turn down a 30" length of wood into a clue-by-four. |
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| An image to make you snarf |
[Apr. 26th, 2008|04:41 pm] |
Indiana Jones meets the Cold War
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chuckles48's journal