Thursday, January 01, 2004

Seen on a mailing list: a history of General Magic. 7:06:50 PM    comment () I watched SWAT on videotape today--it's mostly pro-government propaganda in the form of a mindless action film. There was one scene that slipped through that was interesting, though. Two men spring a prisoner using a suppressed pistol and a cheap submachinegun, followed by a scene where a LAPD spin doctor is giving a press conference--he claims that the men were armed with AK-47s. In real life the LAPD loves to tell lies like that, but I wouldn't have expected to see it in a movie that was generally worshipful of the cops. 6:27:54 PM    comment () Mad Cow Spurs Livestock Tracking. Officials researching the recent mad cow case in Washington state, stymied by a hodgepodge of paper-based data, are pushing for a centralized database and electronic tracking. Cows may soon be traced with RFID tags, retinal scans and GPS chips. [Wired News] Only a week ago Claire Wolfe had made this post: I'M SURE IT'S COMPLETELY, ABSOLUTELY, AROUND-THE-BEND PARANOID to suspect that it's no coincidence that the U.S. gets its first case of mad cow disease (and an urgent need to trace the entire life history of an individual animal) just days after the USDA announces plans for a Draconian, federally run nationwide tracking system for all livestock (which just happens to be a natural trial run for a future people-tracking system). It's completely flip-oid to imagine that that anybody would engineer a huge scare to sell the virtues of a system that folks might otherwise be suspicious about. Yeah, completely whack-job, padded-cell paranoid. Don't go there. Paranoid? It's not paranoia if they really are out to get you. 5:39:32 PM    comment () This test post was made from a "Tinderbox" document. After setting the preferences to post into my Radio weblog, I created this note as usual within a Tinderbox document. This is handy because I have a Commonplace Book in Tinderbox and I may sometimes wish to post items to my weblog from it. This is much more convenient than copying and pasting. 5:28:45 PM    comment () Afghan Constitutional Convention Adjourns [AP World News] Afghanistan's constitutional convention came off the rails Thursday, as panicked officials adjourned the gathering in the face of a boycott by opponents of President Hamid Karzai. The delay was the most severe setback yet to this war-ravaged nation's attempt to put its vision of a secure future on paper, and raises real concern that the historic gathering will end in failure. It's interesting to compare this news story to the Wall Street Journal editorial on the same event. The neocons really have no connection with reality. 4:05:18 PM    comment () Protecting Your Livelihood. One of the topics which has been gaining ground since, well, forever, has been that of jobs moving outside the United States. Here's the most recent occurrence: In one of the largest moves to "offshore" highly paid U.S. software jobs, International Business Machines Corp. has told its managers to plan... [Kim du Toit] I don't agree with Mr. du Toit on many things, but I think he has it exactly right on this subject. 3:40:25 PM    comment () Americans Fingerprinted at Brazil Airport [AP World News] Federal Judge Julier Sebastiao da Silva ordered the measure Monday in response to the new U.S. anti-terror regulation requiring citizens from 27 nations, including Brazil, to be fingerprinted and photographed when entering America. Maybe if enough foreign governments treat Americans the way the US government treats foreigners, Americans will start trying to get the Feds to behave a bit more sanely. 3:16:02 PM    comment () The power in my apartment building has been out since I got home from work yesterday--at least 16 hours so far. All the buildings on the block are affected, as well as some streetlights in the neighborhood. Some of the surrounding blocks have power and some don't. The weather is fairly cold, making it quite uncomfortable to be without heat. I also discovered that the building has an electric water heater, as there is no hot water available. I can still use my TiBook, subject to the limits of its unimpressive battery life, but with no power for my Internet connection it's not very useful. There had been a shorter outage during the week of Christmas (which I slept through), and several momentary drops that weren't long enough to affect anything. Perhaps it would be a good idea to start investigating small generators. 8:58:24 AM    comment ()

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