Are you confused about this talk of "allowing re-importation" of drugs from Canada? So am I. Good thing for all of us that someone slightly less lazy and slightly more interested than me decided to look into the Canadian drug thing. (Actually, Jeff at ShapeOfDays.com was only energetic and interested enough to ask others to "spoon feed" the answers to him; more than I can say for myself!)
A long story made short:If you suspected that it's a stOOpid idea, your suspicions prove correct. It is a stOOpid idea. While this risky scheme, to borrow a phrase from Algore, might, might, lower costs of name brand drugs by 1% over the next decade, H.R. 2427 could also increase the cost of non-imported drugs by $1 billion in the first year alone. StOOpid!!
(Did I over use "stOOpid" in this post? Perhaps.)
Sunday, October 10, 2004
Thursday, October 07, 2004
Mo' Haileygate
Staci D. Kramer at Wired.com news reports that Prof. Hailey is being pursued by mob of bloggers. Curiously, there's no mention of the Photoshop files the Prof. left on the school server.
Wednesday, October 06, 2004
bortaS bIr jablu'DI' reH QaQqu' nay'
Michelle Malkin is annoyed at the AP's description of Dick Cheney's performance at the debate as having a "cold efficiency". One must remember, however, that "Revenge is a dish that is best served cold".
Tuesday, October 05, 2004
The most memorable post-debate line
The award goes to Dennis Miller who said that Edwards' handlers "wisely chose to number his body parts so they could put him back together after Cheney finished slicing and dicing him".
Friday, October 01, 2004
The Bushies and the Swifties
Jim Lindgren at The Volokh Conspiracy wonders about connections between the Bush campaign and the Swift Boat veterans For Truth ads. He cites this exchange between George Bush and Bill O'Reilly...
...and then describes Pres. Bush as looking "awfully sick to his stomach".
I don't see anything sinister here. So he didn't say "Absolutely not!!"; he knows better than to vouch for the actions of people he can't watch 24/7. When you don't know the answer to a question, the correct response is "I don't know". The stupid response is to speak of things you cannot know about. Bush knows better.
O'REILLY: You didn't know anything about the Swift Boat ads before they went on the air, did you?
BUSH: No. I didn't.
O'REILLY: Did Karl Rove know anything about it?
BUSH: I don't think so. In other words, you're asking if anybody coordinated this in our campaign?
O'REILLY: No, whether they'd give you a heads up they were going to do it.
BUSH: Not to my knowledge.
...and then describes Pres. Bush as looking "awfully sick to his stomach".
I don't see anything sinister here. So he didn't say "Absolutely not!!"; he knows better than to vouch for the actions of people he can't watch 24/7. When you don't know the answer to a question, the correct response is "I don't know". The stupid response is to speak of things you cannot know about. Bush knows better.
The remodeled romper room
No, your monitor isn't broken; I made some changes. I was getting bored with the old template.
More on "Haileygate"...
Wizbang reports that the Hailey report may have been done at the request of Utah State University. There are lots of interesting links on the Wizbang page. The report site is down and University authorities are investigating the situation.
Thursday, September 30, 2004
The Rathergate saga won't go away
This is just too funny!
In the ongoing Rathergate melodrama, another defender has stepped forward to safeguard Dan's virtue. This knight in shining armor claims to have proof that the See-BS memos are, in fact, the product of a typewriter. However, Wizbang has got the goods on him!
David Hailey of Utah State had rallied the hopes of Dan's peeps at the Boston Globe with his analysis of the infamous memos. But he made a mistake or two. The first was failing to look at his published handywork at high magnification. It becomes obvious that characters were added to his "typewriter" samples with Photoshop. Why would one say that Photoshop was used? That leads us to his second mistake: Leaving his Photoshop files in a public folder on the university server. Word is that the Boston Globe has stopped returning Hailey's phone calls.
In the ongoing Rathergate melodrama, another defender has stepped forward to safeguard Dan's virtue. This knight in shining armor claims to have proof that the See-BS memos are, in fact, the product of a typewriter. However, Wizbang has got the goods on him!
David Hailey of Utah State had rallied the hopes of Dan's peeps at the Boston Globe with his analysis of the infamous memos. But he made a mistake or two. The first was failing to look at his published handywork at high magnification. It becomes obvious that characters were added to his "typewriter" samples with Photoshop. Why would one say that Photoshop was used? That leads us to his second mistake: Leaving his Photoshop files in a public folder on the university server. Word is that the Boston Globe has stopped returning Hailey's phone calls.
Wednesday, September 29, 2004
Where do you want to be taken today?
Oh joy: JPEG exploit could beat antivirus software. Thanks Bill.
Tuesday, September 28, 2004
No, I didn't feel it
...But I imagine that the folks at the Parkfield earthquake observatory are quite excited about today's quake. Preliminary magnitude is 5.9.
Wednesday, September 15, 2004
Tuesday, September 14, 2004
Well... Let's try to look on the bright side of this whole Rathergate disaster.
It's kinda neat to know that MS Word can so faithfully reproduce documents across platforms and defaults printers. I remember back when changing the default printer on a document would wreak havoc on the formatting. This made working on a document from multiple networked workstations difficult. Changing workstations might mean changing printers. The word processing program would then change the fonts to match the new default printer and scatter your formatting to the winds. Those days are long gone. Now, you can create a document on Word and know that when you send the file to someone else, they will see the formatting just as you intended.
This is pretty cool... Unless you're trying to forge a document that was supposedly written on a typewriter 30 years ago!
What's the font size, Kenneth?!?
It's kinda neat to know that MS Word can so faithfully reproduce documents across platforms and defaults printers. I remember back when changing the default printer on a document would wreak havoc on the formatting. This made working on a document from multiple networked workstations difficult. Changing workstations might mean changing printers. The word processing program would then change the fonts to match the new default printer and scatter your formatting to the winds. Those days are long gone. Now, you can create a document on Word and know that when you send the file to someone else, they will see the formatting just as you intended.
This is pretty cool... Unless you're trying to forge a document that was supposedly written on a typewriter 30 years ago!
What's the font size, Kenneth?!?
Monday, June 07, 2004
I have been thinking for the last three days about what to write on the passing of Ronald Reagan. He was the first President I had the priviledge of voting for in 1984. (I missed being able to vote for him in 1980 by a little over 1 year.) He set into motion a chain of events in this nation that has yet to play out. The "Reagan Revolution" continues to this day.
In thinking about what Reagan did during his Presidency, I began to think about how history would have changed without him. And when I began thinking about what the world would have been like, I realized that I had already seen this movie: Red Dawn. Red Dawn is an alternative history where the plot's "what if" is "what if Ronald Reagan had never been President".
Without Reagan, Jimmy Carter is re-elected in 1980. Abroad, Carter continues his anemic response to Soviet aggression. At home, the Malaise continues; there is no economic boom in the 80s and 90s. Where Reagan aided the Afghan people in their struggle against Soviet tyranny, Carter does nothing more than his boycott of the Olympic games. Nicaragua stays under Soviet control. Grenada becomes even more firmly entrenched as a Soviet satellite. Communist rebels in El Salvador succeed. Honduras falls. Costa Rica falls. Panama falls. Communist revolutions spread through South America like a cancer. Mexico begins to bend under the pressure of refugees fleeing north.
Without Reagan, there is no SDI. Without SDI, the Soviet Union is never pushed to the breaking point. Eastern Europe stays in Soviet hands. There is no Glastnost. Without Reagan's aid to the Afghans, the Soviets hang on and defeat the Mujahadeen. They are left in a position to threaten Pakistan. If they succeed, they can threaten the West's oil supplies in a way that Saddam could only dream of.
Without Reagan, there is no tax cut. The top tax rate stays ridiculously high and the boom of the 80s and 90s never happens. Economies all over the world depended on the Reagan boom to get started. From Asia to Europe, economies would have stagnated. There would be no Internet and thus no "eCommerce". Without Reaganomics, the economies of the West would have been weakend and thus more vulnerable to Soviet aggression.
In short, all of the set-up from the opening minute of Red Dawn would have had a chance to come true. America's allies would have dwindled, one by one, until we would have been left standing alone. And that weakness would have invited aggression from the USSR. Reagan's policies of strength detered aggression and lead to peace.
In 1980, freedom and democracy were on the decline. Today, those ideas are spreading. America is leading that advance rather than a retreat into darkness. The world is getting better; not worse.
Thank God for Ronald Reagan.
In thinking about what Reagan did during his Presidency, I began to think about how history would have changed without him. And when I began thinking about what the world would have been like, I realized that I had already seen this movie: Red Dawn. Red Dawn is an alternative history where the plot's "what if" is "what if Ronald Reagan had never been President".
Without Reagan, Jimmy Carter is re-elected in 1980. Abroad, Carter continues his anemic response to Soviet aggression. At home, the Malaise continues; there is no economic boom in the 80s and 90s. Where Reagan aided the Afghan people in their struggle against Soviet tyranny, Carter does nothing more than his boycott of the Olympic games. Nicaragua stays under Soviet control. Grenada becomes even more firmly entrenched as a Soviet satellite. Communist rebels in El Salvador succeed. Honduras falls. Costa Rica falls. Panama falls. Communist revolutions spread through South America like a cancer. Mexico begins to bend under the pressure of refugees fleeing north.
Without Reagan, there is no SDI. Without SDI, the Soviet Union is never pushed to the breaking point. Eastern Europe stays in Soviet hands. There is no Glastnost. Without Reagan's aid to the Afghans, the Soviets hang on and defeat the Mujahadeen. They are left in a position to threaten Pakistan. If they succeed, they can threaten the West's oil supplies in a way that Saddam could only dream of.
Without Reagan, there is no tax cut. The top tax rate stays ridiculously high and the boom of the 80s and 90s never happens. Economies all over the world depended on the Reagan boom to get started. From Asia to Europe, economies would have stagnated. There would be no Internet and thus no "eCommerce". Without Reaganomics, the economies of the West would have been weakend and thus more vulnerable to Soviet aggression.
In short, all of the set-up from the opening minute of Red Dawn would have had a chance to come true. America's allies would have dwindled, one by one, until we would have been left standing alone. And that weakness would have invited aggression from the USSR. Reagan's policies of strength detered aggression and lead to peace.
In 1980, freedom and democracy were on the decline. Today, those ideas are spreading. America is leading that advance rather than a retreat into darkness. The world is getting better; not worse.
Thank God for Ronald Reagan.
Thursday, June 03, 2004
Some of the links on this blog may lead to sites that require you to register before you can view the content. I try to avoid that; however, if the box I'm using has a cookie set for that site, I may not realize that I'm logged on to such a site. If you do not wish to register, and thus hand over a bunch of personal information, head over to BugMeNot.com. BugMeNot is a database of usernames and passwords for sites such as the LA Times, the NY Times, and the Washington Post. You can thus view the content without having to waste time telling the site that your real name is "Dona Juana Bespammed", you're a female born in 1905, and you live in the 90210 ZIP code.
Tuesday, May 25, 2004
I've added a blog to the San Fernando Valley NRA Members' Council web page. Click the "news" link on the sidebar menu. (Yes, I'm that site's webmaster.)
Tuesday, April 27, 2004
This morning on Fox, raw footage of Marines in Fallujah was being shown. These Marines had taken over an abandonded house and were drawing fire while spotting targets for air support and other units. What impressed me was the utter calm these boys possessed. They were probably outnumbered by the goblins darting around outside, but you couldn't tell by looking at them. They were relaxed, even joking, as they methodically reinforced their position and hunted out targets. The SAW gunner looked like his only concern was hearing his squad leader's commands over the din coming through the open door in front of him. These "boys" are well trained and they know it. The orcs outside didn't stand a chance.
Wednesday, April 14, 2004
I was poking around on Google looking up the address that "Citi-online" email links to . (It points the victim to a redirect service in Moscow.) While I was looking, I found the Antiphishing.org website. Think of this as Snopes for email scams.
If you have any doubts about an email you've received, check here. You may not find the exact scam, but you'll likely see something similar. Many phishing scams are very well done, despite the poor Engrish. These Citi-bank scams send you to Citi-bank's site but, there's a pop-up window over the top that isn't from Citi-bank; the "litlle winddow". I had another a few days ago that was a very well done replica of a Paypal page (Similar to this scam.) on a Korean webserver. That one, as a finishing touch, sends the victim off to the Paypal.com 404 page after grabbing the info. In short, be suspicious of what comes to your inbox!
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