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"You Can't Fight Evil With A Macaroni Duck!"

General musings and observations of the world. Commentaries and thoughts on various subjects. Links to interesting sites and programs. Site's name comes from the TV cartoon "The Tick". [Scott aka Alefifer]

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Location: somewhere on the eastern shore, Maryland, United States

Originally from Rhode Island and now living in Maryland. Happily married to my best friend and have two wonderful daughters. I have a sense of humor that sometimes takes over when I should be restraining it.

Monday, June 26, 2006

Fox News May Be Launching News Satire Show

Apparently Fox News is a bit jealous towards the success that Comedy Central's "The Daily Show" has been receiving. Rumor has it that they are considering a show that will be a right-wing version of The Daily Show and will star Laura Ingraham.

It won't work. One of the reasons that The Daily Show is a hit is not just the humor; it's also the fact that it reports the news without the spin that mainstream media uses. Truth delivered with humor. I don't think that Fox News is capable of delivering either humor or truth.

It may be funny to watch her attempts. Though my impulse to through a brick through my TV may become too strong. LOL

Thanks to MoxieGrrl for the tip on this one.

Read more here!

Sunday, June 18, 2006

Mainstream Media

Jerry Lanson has written a piece on the mainstream media and how it reports the news. Nice article. Here's a brief exerpt:

Facts have never gotten in the way of the Bush Administration. Too often, it lives and dies by the big lie, repeated over and over again. Reporters call this “spin,” because the word "lie" makes them uncomfortable. But whatever name they give it, they should always provide evidence (call it verifiable fact or context) that measures the spin against what is known. Providing this contrast, after all, is the news media's job.

Perhaps if our country has lots of Journalism professors like Jerry Lanson and they can instill in their students enough vision and courage to be real journalists...then maybe one day America can regain its press.

Wednesday, June 14, 2006

NSA might be reading your Myspace

This is interesting.

Sad.
Sad for America.


New Scientist has discovered that Pentagon's National Security Agency, which specialises in eavesdropping and code-breaking, is funding research into the mass harvesting of the information that people post about themselves on social networks. And it could harness advances in internet technology - specifically the forthcoming "semantic web" championed by the web standards organisation W3C - to combine data from social networking websites with details such as banking, retail and property records, allowing the NSA to build extensive, all-embracing personal profiles of individuals.

Data mining update

Wednesday, June 07, 2006

Morgue Tells the Updated Story

This article relates the story of a doctor that works in the central morgue of Baghdad. He reports that every month this year the morgue has received over one thousand bodies. This amount is 700-800 more bodies a month than before the war.

"Most of those brought dead here have been tortured by beating, electricity, acid, drills, and by other horrible ways," said an Iraqi who refused to give his name. "When any Iraqi is arrested by police now it means we will find his dead body in Baghdad's streets after some days. Because of all this killing, this morgue is not enough."

Go read the full story.

IRAQ: Morgue Tells the Updated Story

Tuesday, June 06, 2006

National Call-In Day: June 7 Iraq Debate Needed - Operators Are Standing By




Wednesday June 7th. Call your representative in Congress at

1-888-355-3588!

Let them know how you feel. Urge them to sign H.Res 543 calling for an open debate on Iraq!

Has your representative already signed? Check here!

It is way past time for your representatives to do what they should have in the first place. It is now time for us to let them know how we feel. Act!

Thanks to AnnaMarie for bringing this to my attention!

Saturday, June 03, 2006

Empty? No, Don't Say Empty!

Last night a rapidly moving thunderstorm came through my area. My attempt to get offline and log off my computer however where not quick enough. The power went out right after I had just closed my browser and was about to go offline. The result was when the storm had passed and I fired up the computer to go back online I discovered that ... my Firefox browswer's bookmarks are empty. Every bookmark and bookmark folder I had is gone. I had thousands. All my browswer's customizations also gone.

All is not lost though. My history is still intact, so I can revisit many sites and start rebuilding my bookmarks. I also had exported my bookmarks to a text file a while ago, unfortunately it was a long time ago...march of 2005. But it's a start.

From now on I'll always periodically save my bookmarks somewhere.

Looks like a good time perhaps to finally upgrade my Firefox to the most recent version.

Empty! This is not fun.