I tuned in Fox News on the old “Radiation King” television on a lark around 4:30 AM Eastern Standard Time, out of some form of morbid curiosity. I’ve heard a lot of ranting and raving from both proponents and opponents of their reporting and the questioned quality of their reporting, but like anything else, it is best to see this sort of thing and make your own decisions.

What I found was rhetoric and montage shots of soldiers and waving flags. The story was one on Donald Rumsfeld (the current Administration’s Secretary of Defense) and the possibility that he would be replaced before the end of the current Administration. The reporter asked questions like “since the next administration will certainly not be as vigilant in the war on terror, how do you intend to deal with it(sic)” and “what do you think of the American people(sic)”; questions which are so glib and meaningless as to not require the effort of being asked. The reporter seemed to be more interested in aggrandizing the politician for his efforts in “Donald Rumsfeld’s … America’s … War on Terror”. As I have stated before, wars on abstract concepts have been poor ideas in past and continue to be poor ideas.

Strangely, I haven’t heard anything in any of the local papers or mainstream news regarding the house and senate passing the closest thing to outright totalitarianism I have seen in a long time, and it’s pretty obvious that not only the majority of the congress, but also the majority of the media, seem to be pretty intimately aquainted with the Administration’s posterior. I don’t give much credit to the idea of “blogging” news (blogging, of course, being one of my least favorite pseudo-words, right up there with “webinar” and “podcast”), but I can’t possibly think that the jokers who are paid salaries to do this sort of thing are doing an acceptable job.

I sense the Roman ethos making an awful resurgence through the trumpeting of news stories about ten-year dead beauty queens that don’t impact people at large (an example of missing white-woman syndrome, I suppose) and horrible brown-nosing “portraits” of public figures, such as the aforementioned interview with Donald Rumsfeld (not the first, I might add). Throw a couple tax rebates in there, drop gasoline prices from their artificially induced high point a little, and watch approval ratings soar … or at least come close enough to keep a rival political party from keeping you in check. All of this to mask passing of legislation to decriminalize the conversion of the United States Constitution and its Bill of Rights to pieces of legislative toilet paper, and the passing of basic rights into the realm of history.

Normally, this is the point where “bloggers” tell you to vote for the other jokers. As my brother once put, “when you have an incumbent who eats babies, you vote for the guy who doesn’t eat babies (sic)”. The problem with that is, I don’t think that the Democratic party is going to do much better than the ruling party right now. Sure, you can have some of your rights back, assuming that the Supreme Court comes to its senses and strikes down the latest piece of Congressional Bush-kissing, and *maybe* you might get a withdrawl, or perhaps even the *plan* of withdrawl from an ever-deepening quagmire after the Chief Executive leaves office (since he has made it very clear that any withdrawl or resolution would come from a successor). The issue is that the current crop of Democrats in Congress are obviously willing to pass Republican agenda legislation (even after they vehemently debate about it, as seen in Arlen Spector), even when it is contrary to everything for which they supposedly stand. I’d like my Congressional representative to actually represent me, thank you. That’s the point of a Representative Democracy, not to vote along with whomever is least likely to paint you as a terrorist-friendly pinko in the public eye, and Swift-Boat you out of office …. I don’t understand how 30% or more of the United States can’t see that.

A third party would be a wonderful idea … if they could come up with something comprehensive. The Green Party is more of a local joke than anything else, since they don’t really have strong political views on whatever voters seem to care about ; hugging a tree and talking about cutting emissions while Americans are complaining about gasoline prices just doesn’t do it. Could someone *please* try running candidates who aren’t one-note songs, which although better than the current civil-rights hating jerkasses that they are running against, don’t evoke true passion and commitment from voters by actually connecting with them on a broad range of issues? I’m slowly witnessing the death of our Representative Democracy through a system where only primaries truly determine the majority of political candidates due to the predominance of incumbents winning races. I can only think that this has to do with our own inertia and unwillingness to participate in the political process, and indeed in the running of our own country.

But back to the media, and in particular Fox News. For some reason, this isn’t in the public consciousness. If I ask a random person, I doubt they will bring up any of these issues or express distaste with the current administration, with the exception of the items which directly effect them. For a company which runs drivel like “American Idol” and “Jerry Springer“, where fame and infamy are comingled with impugnity, it struck me as odd that they would be for censorship and religious agenda — until it hit me that it’s a slight-of-hand trick. If you’re watching these nonsense “documentary pieces” and shows of people who are obviously more pathetic than you, you aren’t in the process of caring about how your country is run. You’ll vote for whoever pulls your heartstrings and purse string. I guess that’s why I don’t watch Fox News; I just can’t bear it.

Apparently, fear of partisan political reprisal trumps constitutional rights, decency, and a host of other important things in the lastest failure of the United States’ legislative branch to keep insanity out of our lawbooks.

Both political parties seem to have failed us horribly. Republicans sided with a corrupt and out-of-control administration in an effort to bolster itself against possible defeat in midterm elections, while Democrats, afraid of being considered “light on terror”, only put up a limp-wristed struggle, with the bill in question passing easily.

The “evil” in question is the Military Appropriations Act of 2006, which allows anyone, even a citizen of the United States, to be declared a “lawful enemy combatant”, and therefore be stripped of all civil rights and due process. Many have said that this sets us back “900 years … by denying habeas corpus (sic)” to pre Magna Carta status. A nice, simple review of what this bill does is here.

I probably shouldn’t be speaking out against this, since doing so might inadvertantly classify me as one of these supposed “enemy combatants”. It’s a shame when an awful legal loophole can be expanded like this to allow uncontrolled expansion of Executive power. I, for one, advocate the use of encryption technologies like OTR for IM communication, TOR for web browsing, and anything else you can get your hands on to keep yourself away from the overextended reach of the overzealous executive branch.

Maybe, upon midterm elections in this country, we can try to reclaim what is rightfully ours — the liberties guaranteed to us by the Bill of Rights. I urge anyone living in the United States to vote against any incumbent official who voted for or advocated this bill in whole or in part. I used to think that the root of the problem was the neoconservative administration in power, but I’m starting to realize that there are very few who cannot help shoulder the blame for the enormous trench we’re digging ourselves into. How can people envy your liberties and freedoms when you’re more than willing to trade them cheaply for a little inferred temporary security?

I hate writing posts about political matters. Maybe at some point the insanity will die down, and I can go back to writing about things that *don’t* make me mad for a change.

For those who use Apache 2.x, this is a nice trick to keep people from hotlinking your images. I’ve seen a few variants of it, but this one I picked up most recently from a slashdot comment, of all places.

Make sure you have enabled mod_rewrite, then add this in your .htaccess file for any directory with images in it:

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 RewriteEngine on
 RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://(www.)?yourdomain.com [NC]
 RewriteRule .* /files/goatse.jpg [NC,L]

to redirect to an awful image, or use my own personal variant:

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 RewriteEngine on
 RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^$
 RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://(www.)?sitename.com/.*$ [NC]
 RewriteRule .(gif|jpg|png)$ - [F]

which doesn’t return anything if someone else hotlinks your images. If they like your images enough, they can like them enough to save a copy on their own webserver.

I’ve been watching a great deal more television, reading a great deal more papers and “blogs”, and listening to a lot more interviews these days. And though it’s extremely hard to do this without politicizing what I see, I try to look at it as objectively as I can, from as many sources as I can.

I’m getting downright sick of this “War on Terror”. Not that global terrorism (as opposed to local terrorism?) isn’t an awful, awful thing, but that it has been a problem for years. I don’t think any American president for at least the last thirty or forty years has been exempt from having to deal with some sort of terrorism, whether pertaining directly to our citizens or to citizens of nations with which we have chosen to ally ourselves. I just have trouble lending credibility to the idea that we’re declaring war on “terror”. For some reason, it was shortened from “terrorism” to “terror” … I think I even vaguely remember when we declared a “war on terrorism”. The problem with this is the basic concept ; not only can you not declare war on a noun, but we’re not really fighting terror.

My good friend Webster defines terror as “to frighten”. I don’t think I have ever seen the people of my country as frightened as they are now. We were afraid to open our mail due to Anthrax (which turned out to most likely be an American, not an “international terrorist”, but that’s completely irrelevant), afraid to fly because of the prospect of people smashing planes into buildings, afraid to keep our civil liberties, and afraid to voice our opinions due to the prospect of being tainted as a coward, deserter, or someone who doesn’t love our country. You can’t fight terror by terrorizing the people you’re supposed to be protecting ; simple logic.

I love my country. I really do. I also believe that one of the highest forms of patriotism is being able to question your country and its leaders, to hold them accountable for their actions, whether or not you agree with them by political party lines. It would be nice if that weren’t vilified as unpatriotic, though.

While we’re talking about wars on nouns, how about the war on the English language? Referring back to Webster, torture is defined as ” … inflicting agony … to punish or coerce (sic)”, yet I keep hearing pundits on a lot of mainstream media channels and “blogs” continue to try to make a distinction between torture and coersion, as if the intention behind an act alters the definition of the act itself. I’m more than a little upset that atrocities are carried out under the banner of protecting the liberties and freedoms of the people living in this country. Whether I support the *actual* wars that are being fought right now (the ones which don’t have an intangible object as the intended target) or not is irrelevant. I believe that we should be attempting to comport ourselves in a manner which appropriately reflects the greatness and respect of our country if we want others to respect it in the same way, in much the way that tourists represent the country from which they hail.

Please, stop trying to split hairs and redefine words. Don’t hide behind these words, but instead use your actions to convey something far greater: that you are a member of the greatest nation on earth, and that you respect everyone else’s right to have the same liberties that you brag about. What good is bringing freedom to the world if you can’t maintain your basic constitutional rights here?

I was sitting by myself a few days ago, and started to wonder about the value of a single person. Not in relation to society, or anything else that tangible, but in relation to the totality of existence.

At first, I thought that the lack of a single person’s existence would irreperably alter the universe. Everything we do impacts others in thousands upon millions of imperceptible ways every day we’re alive, so wouldn’t one missing person somehow change the fabric of existence? Even stranger than that, wouldn’t that mean that everyone, no matter how insignificant they may seem at first glance, is special because they hold together what we consider to be reality?

Then I thought a bit further, and realized that a lot of the things we do cancel each other out, and thought that it didn’t seem possible that everyone could possibly hold the ability to alter reality and existence. It smacks of Chaos Theory (no matter how contested it is) to think that all of our contrary, opposing actions keep everything in balance and in check, so that the loss of a single person wouldn’t really make much difference in the grand scheme of the cosmos.

In reality, I think the answer is somewhere between the two. We can’t really aggrandize our lives and think that the universe would fall apart if we weren’t here, but I think that reality would change, and that pulling a single thread from a tapestry would eventually cause it to unravel or rearrange into something distinctly different. Maybe it’s not a reason for thinking that you have value or worth in the infinity of the universe, but it’s not as though you have to think that you have no effect on the universe either. As in everything else in life, this is best represented in shades of grey.

There’s something about getting older. Things invariably change, life progresses, and eventually your perceptions begin to shift, ever so slightly. There’s also something of an Easter Bunny effect which happens at some point in your life ; for me, it was my birthday this year.

As you grow up, you think of certain days as special, whether they be days which are special to you, like your birthday, graduation, et cetera, or days which are special in some sort of cultural significance such as holidays (religious or secular), vacation, even certain days of the week. At some point when you grow older, each of these days begin to lose that tiny piece which makes them special to you. One year, you don’t see Halloween as being any different than any other day, beside the aggravation of cleaning up mess from vandals. Another year you learn that the Easter Bunny isn’t real, and that someone has been pulling a cruel trick on you all of these years. (I must say that the Easter Bunny one never happened to me, simply because I wasn’t raised to believe in Easter or its trappings. Still, the point is there.)

I’m a little bit torn as to whether I’m happy or not at this transition ; is it better to see magic in a day or circumstance, rather than believing that every day is the same, more or less, as the one proceeding and one to follow? I’m certain it’s the more “mature” of the two ; you rarely see grown men excited about Santa Claus visiting, or counting the days until their next birthday. Perhaps it’s simply a loss of childish innocence to open your eyes and see less wonder and amazement, and instead see pattern and routine. Rationally we all know that you don’t magically become a year older in a single day, but that it is a single day which brings that change into sharp contrast whether it be for good, bad or indifference. I’m not sure I miss the anticipation and buildup that come with expecting something to be somehow different from what came before and after it; is that what it means to truly grow up?

Happy birthday.

I took Stan up to Crystal Lake, where he had a great time swimming and doing whatever it is that dogs do. Some pictures:

To assign multiple external IP addresses to a WRT54G/S, you have to push a multiline variable into the rc_firewall nvram variable (non-volatile ram):

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 nvram set rc_firewall="
 iptables -t nat -I PREROUTING -d x.y.z.1 -j DNAT --to-destination 192.168.1.x
 iptables -t nat -I PREROUTING -d x.y.z.2 -j DNAT --to-destination 192.168.1.x
 "
 nvram commit

This will protect the changes against being lost when the router is reset.

I have created a wordpress “diff” which can be applied to easily upgrade WordPress 2.0.1 to WordPress 2.0.3 instead of going through the long and involved method on the WordPress Codex. Use diff and a grain of salt with wordpress-patch-2.0.1-to-2.0.3.gz.

I have compiled an initial 2.6.17 kernel for Ubuntu Dapper Drake, as described on ubuntustudio.com. It has the EVMS patch needed by Ubuntu as well as the realtime patch installed. This version is not usplash patched. Files : kernel-headers-2.6.17-rt7_1_i386.deb, kernel-image-2.6.17-rt7_1_i386.deb