Friday, February 01, 2002

The solution - I have a solution for the embarrassing "illegal-immigrants-in-detention-sewing-their-lips-together" issue for the Federal Government. It is really simple and really effective. What if the government were to pass a new law that makes self harm (including hunger strikes and of course lip sewing) an illegal act (a felony if you will). Any person seeking asylum in Australia is immediately disqualified if they are a convicted criminal. Therefore if someone participates in a campaign of self-harm they would be immediately deported. Could this work? [Victor Echo Zulu] Depends on what it was supposed to accomplish. If I was imprisoned in a concentration camp in the Australian desert, and all I had to do to escape was go on a hunger strike, you'd better believe I would do it. Australia would be rid of all those "undesirables," which is obviously what they want. The would-be immigrants, having learned their lesson, would then be free to try some country with a more civilized immigration policy. comment () trackback ()  10:58:39 PM     Packing.org. AR, LA, NC, OK, SC, TX and WA are now recognized in Virginia (Virginia: 27 hits) [Packing.org] What about Utah and Florida? They issue nonresident permits and are honored in most states already (33 last I looked). I suppose I can try to get a nonresident permit from one of those seven states the next time I go to Virginia, but it would be nice if they just honored one of the permits I already have. comment () trackback ()  7:37:41 PM     Matsushita 1900 mAh NiMH. Matsushita (Panasonic) has today announced new 1900 mAh AA NiMH rechargeable batteries. Up until this point the maximum capacity of NiMH AA available was around 1800 mAh. Interestingly the batteries are... [Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)] I wonder how long my MessagePad 2100 would run on these batteries. Maybe I should buy some and find out! comment () trackback ()  2:03:37 PM     The British National Health System vs. Kaiser Permanente. A study published in the British Medical Journal suggests that Kaiser Permanente is a more effective provider of health services than is the British National Health System. [LeftWatch.Com] It's probably too much to hope that American advocates of socialized medicine will pay attention to this. I've always wondered why, when those advocates hate HMOs so much, do they think that replacing them with a single government-run HMO would be an improvement? comment () trackback ()  12:42:35 PM     News.Com: Plotting the revival of Ricochet. Our approach is, "Let's build a public-private partnership." We have to rent space on top of light poles to put our antennas on. Most of those poles are either owned by cities or utilities. So we have to lease the space from them. We're trying to get a better lease rate (than what Metricom was paying). [Tomalak's Realm] I'll certainly sign up if it comes back in LA. I hope this time they concentrate on major cities where people will use the service, though. Metricom held back on making the service available until they had it installed in many cities all over the country, and then it tried to support all those cities at once. It's no wonder they failed! What they should have done in the first place was expand a city at a time. The Ricochet network was active (although at the lower speed) in Los Angeles for some time before the "official" date--Metricom should have started signing people up here first. Then, when they had enough customers, they could go to one more city, like New York, and so on. comment () trackback ()  12:33:09 PM     Nasa outlines space tourist criteria. US space agency, Nasa, releases a list of criteria future space tourists will have to meet to be allowed onto the ISS. [BBC News: sci/tech] Since NASA has no intention of allowing tourists themselves, this is really just a set of demands they're attempting to impose on other people who might. Specifically, it's directed at Russia, since the Russian space program is the only one to show an interest in capitalism so far. How's that for irony? comment () trackback ()  12:24:03 PM     Plea to close Sangatte rejected. A French court rejects a fresh attempt by the Channel Tunnel operators to shut down the Sangatte refugee camp for security reasons. [BBC News: world] Tens of thousands of migrants cross Europe every year, many of them heading for Britain where they hope to find work on the black market. This is a fairly obvious statement about conditions in Britain compared to the rest of Europe. I wonder if this situation will go away as the EU gradually drags Britain down to the level of the rest of Europe? comment () trackback ()  12:19:51 PM

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