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Tuesday, 20 September 2005 |
I found this fascinating (but tragic) article linked from Bruce Schneier's latest CRYPTO-GRAM.
An out of work ice cream man built a VCR farm and figured out how to
beat the Press Your Luck game show. I found two aspects of the story
particularly interesting. First, never underestimate what people are
capable of given sufficient time and motivation, and second, don't
forget the get away plan!
Schneier's comments on Movie Plot Security and Katrina
are worth a read. He makes a convincing arguement that many of the
homeland security dollars spent to date were spent on the wrong
things. Too much duct tape and plastic sheeting, silly alert levels, and too little first responders and improved intelligence.
I got this email this morning from Tennessee State Senator Jim Bryson.
The email is meant to be a self deprecating and sarcastic take on the Tennessee Waltz
sting operation. Sen. Bryson and I stand on different sides of the
aisle, but I've always had a healthy dose of respect for him. He seems
willing to listen to reasonable arguements on all sides of an issue,
tries to keep constituents informed, and is trying to do something to contain identity theft. I emailed him last year to express my opposition when Tennessee was entertaining one of the so called "Super DMCA" bills, introduced as senate bill 3101.
Overall, he impresses me as a republican who hasn't forgotten the
traditional republican ideals of smaller and more fair government,
although the recounting of his trip to the RNC makes it clear he has drank his share of W flavored Kool-Aid.
The Tennesse Waltz sting involved the FBI setting up a fake company and bribing politicians to get a no-bid contract. Here are the indictees
so far. Despite humorus and well intentioned motives the message
belittles a serious event. The message coming from a state senator
gives the impression the whole affair is something to laugh off. It
seems I'm not the only one who thought it was in bad taste, about
forty-five minutes later this message showed up. Not an outright apology, but close.
My biodeisel making buddy Heather sent me this article, The Christian Paradox.
For quite some time I have struggled to understand the paradoxical
tangle often characterized by the media as christian conservative. The
term is cited as an explanatory factor in often contrary positions -
protesting abortion and supporting the war in Iraq, for example. The
article does a great job of probing those contradictions. I often
think of the bumper stickerified version of the whole mess, "Which war
would Jesus support?" I'm far from a christian scholar, but I'd hazard
a guess the answer would be, "none of the above."
Bill Clinton first appeared on the Sunday morning talk shows this week as an ex-president. His interview on This Week with George Stephanopoulos is worth a look. I am
glad to see someone articulate a clear, simple, and solution focused
opposing viewpoint to the current administration without pandering to
their reality distortion field. Whenever other politicians point out
obvious evidence based criticisms things somehow degrade into an
angry exchange of ideology instead of a discussion about the realities
of policy. The war is going badly and started with dubious
justification (I'll leave the debate about whether our leaders were
misinformed or we were intentionaly mislead to the angry idealoges). Tax cuts for
everyone, but mostly the wealthy, combined with unchecked spending make everyone
happy today, but tomorrow the distribtion of wealth will be more
stratified and the more we borrow, the more we erode our ability to
spend in the future.
SpamAssassin 3.1 was released last week. I just upgraded this server without any trouble.
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Last Updated ( Tuesday, 20 September 2005 )
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