Archive for the ‘Opinion’ Category

Way to go, Pair.com!

November 2, 2010

I wanted to put this where people can see it.  As mentioned in the previous post, I moved this weblog to wordpress.com from pair.com.

Part of this involved canceling service with Pair, where I’d been hosted for nearly a decade. I am happy, but not really surprised, to report that this was handled with the same professionalism they’ve shown in hosting my sites.

It’s been my experience that when you cancel service with a company, they will often throw obstacles in your way, or send you to a “save” representative whose job is to talk you out of canceling completely.  Pair did none of these.  The “why do you want to cancel” questions came in the form of an e-mailed request to complete a survey.  The “save” attempt was an offer to waive the setup fee if I ever needed to come back.   Both came after the cancellation, not before.

If you add to this the near-flawless service, and the fact that my monthly bill went down while my disk and bandwidth quotas went up, I have a hard time seeing how I could have done any better elsewhere.

In other words, if you need professional web hosting, just go with Pair, unless you need something they just don’t do.

Well, shit.

February 9, 2009

Glenn Greenwald reports:

Obama fails his first test on civil liberties and accountability — resoundingly and disgracefully

Two weeks ago, I interviewed the ACLU’s Ben Wizner, counsel to 5 individuals suing the subsidiary of Boeing (Jeppesen) which had arranged the Bush administration’s rendition program, under which those 5 plaintiffs had been abducted, sent to other countries and brutally tortured.  Today the Obama administration was required to file with the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals its position in this case — i.e., whether it would continue the Bush administration’s abusive reliance on the “state secrets” privilege to prevent courts from ruling on such matters, or whether they would adhere to Obama’s previous claims about his beliefs on “state secrets” by withdrawing that position and allowing these victims their day in court.

Yesterday, enthusiastic Obama supporter Andrew Sullivan wrote about this case:  ”Tomorrow in a federal court hearing in San Francisco, we’ll find out if the Obama administration intends to keep the evidence as secret as the Bush administration did.”  As I wrote after interviewing Wizner two weeks ago:  ”This is the first real test of the authenticity of Obama’s commitment to reverse the abuses of executive power over the last eight years.”  Today, the Obama administration failed that test – resoundingly and disgracefully

No justice, it seems. Damn it to hell.

Assholes.

November 25, 2008

If you are the type to go around insulting random strangers, it is likely that one of them is going to sock you on the nose. Make no mistake; this would be wrong, and the person who assaulted you should be penalized.

Don’t think, however, that you’ll find a sympathetic ear in me; “he wouldn’t have hit you if you hadn’t been such an asshole” would be my likely response.

I know a guy who is a Mormon, and he tells me stories about protests in California over his church’s role in helping pass Proposition 8. If the stories are to be believed, some of the protestors have crossed the line into tresspass, and even assault.  Make no mistake, this behavior is wrong, and the people doing it should be penalized.

I just don’t want to hear any complaints about it.  They wouldn’t be doing this if the Mormons hadn’t been such assholes on this issue.

C'mon, folks…

September 2, 2008

Just leave Bristol Palin the hell alone.

Yeah, schadenfreude is fun, and heaven knows right-wingers seem to have lots of trouble living up to the standards they so want to impose upon us all, but this is a seventeen-year-old we’re talking about here.

Hammer Sarah Palin for her right-wing social views all you want. Hell, I’ll help.

Just let the girl go.

"When [John McCain] says, 'we have the highest quality of health care in the world in America,' he is speaking as a man who has enjoyed a lifetime of government-run care."

April 30, 2008

Ezra Klein writes:

As Sarah Arnquist has written, aside from his awful internment in a Vietnamese prison camp, it is hard to find a day in McCain’s life when he was not sheltered by the government-run health care he now claims to loathe. Born the son of a Navy admiral, he was cared for by Navy physicians during his childhood. After graduating from high school, he enrolled in the U.S. Military Academy, and the military’s care continued until he retired from the service in 1981. In 1982, he won a seat in Congress, ushering him into the Federal Employee Health Benefits Program, and in 2001, he qualified for Medicare. When he says, “we have the highest quality of health care in the world in America,” he is speaking as a man who has enjoyed a lifetime of government-run care.

Don’t forget to pull the ladder up after you, McCain!

UFO Drone CGI video

October 2, 2007

I’ve been interested in UFOs since the flap of 1973, but since my teens I have never been much impressed with the evidence that has been put forth.

You may have heard, if you keep track of such things, of the so-called “CARET drone” UFO. To make a long story short, over a period of several weeks in May and June, several dramatic pictures and some interesting documents were sent to places like Coast to Coast AM and Earthfiles.

I suspect, but cannot prove, that all this is a hoax, but that’s neither here nor there, because something wonderful has come out of this case that in my opinion makes it all worthwhile.

Two posters to one of the sites that is heatedly debating the
reality of this case, the Open Minds Forum, teamed up to create a
wonderful piece of art about this case. They are German musician
Drone, and British CGI artist Kris Avery, aka Saladfingers. Here it is:

 

 

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http://www.metacafe.com/fplayer/845277/ufo_drone_video.swf
UFO Drone VideoThe funniest home videos are hereI love good CGI, and this is awesome. The crash scene is astounding. (more…)

"One point three percent when legal. One point three percent when illegal."

February 21, 2007

I came across this article on grylliade.org. It was written by Jennifer, one of the posters there, for the newspaper she used to write for. The version that was published was heavily abridged, and she has granted permission to re-post it.

For several reasons, I have long opposed the war on drugs, but even I was surprised at some of the information in this article, especially the 1.3 percent addiction rate throughout the last 100 years.

Article after the break.

(more…)

You first.

September 13, 2006

No, seriously, test the microwave pain beam on yourself first, jackhole:

“If we’re not willing to use it here against our fellow citizens, then we should not be willing to use it in a wartime situation,” said Wynne. “(Because) if I hit somebody with a nonlethal weapon and they claim that it injured them in a way that was not intended, I think that I would be vilified in the world press.”

Via boingboing.

Update: Apparently this paragraph was taken out of context by AP. Quote in context below the fold. My apologies to all involved, especially Sec. Wynne.
(more…)

Sense out of WorldNutDaily?

May 28, 2006

Who woulda thunk? A Christian describes his experience at a football game in a predominantly Shinto/Buddhist town in Hawaii:

The point is this. I am a professional, educated and responsible man who is strong in his faith and is quite comfortable debating the social and political issues of the day. Yet when placed in a setting where the majority culture proved hostile to my faith and beliefs, I became paralyzed with indecision and could not act decisively to defend and proclaim my own beliefs. I felt instantly ostracized and viewed myself as a foreigner in my own land.

Via The Two Percent Company

(more…)

Hear, Hear!

May 12, 2006

Jim Henley on the possibility of a “Nixon-goes-to-China” rapprochement with Iran:

It will gall a lot of administration opponents. When we suggest that we probably could have had a comprehensive deal with the Iranians three or four years ago, it will fall on deaf ears. When we argue that we wasted hundreds of billions of dollars and thousands of US and Iraqi lives to get to a place we stood a good chance of coming to more cheaply, we’ll fade into a barely intelligible background buzz in the national conversation. We’ll make the same arguments about the need for the genuine oversight that one-party government prevents, but hey, times are good today!

That will be a price worth paying.


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