JJB Blog

on 11/21/2005

. 2 Comments

look at this shit:

the navy trains dolphins to patrol and SHOOT POISON DARTS AT TERRORISTS. FURTHERMORE, these dolphins ESCAPED during huricane katrina. ARMED WITH THE DARTS. THIS IS REAL. link
gillette came out with a FIVE BLADE RAZOR. think about that. not only are they all the way up to 5, but they actually SKIPPED 4. this is actually something that the onion specifically predicted. link
that barbara bush quote about the people in the astrodome being “underpriviliged anyway”. i mean really, i could not be more pleased that katrina happened while barb was still alive, so that that quote could go down in history. link
[actually from 2004, but it’s too good to leave out]this quote, from a “senior bush advisor” (speaking to a journalist):

The aide said that guys like me were ”in what we call the reality-based community,” which he defined as people who ”believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.” I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ”That’’s not the way the world really works anymore,” he continued. ”We”re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you”re studying that reality ‚Äì judiciously, as you will ‚Äì we”ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’’s how things will sort out. We”re history’’s actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”

link
update: I had this one bookmarked but forgot to include it in my initial post:

A spokeswoman for the Family Research Council (FRC) says young women should have to deal with the consequences of a rapidly spreading sexually transmitted disease rather then rely on a new vaccine.

The FRC’s Bridget Maher said her group believes over-reliance on the vaccine for the human papilloma virus (HPV) could send the wrong message to young women. “Abstinence is the best way to prevent HPV,” Maher told New Scientist. “Giving the HPV vaccine to young women could be potentially harmful because they may see it as a license to engage in premarital sex.”

what is wrong with 2005? the onion describes reality. the daily show is the only mainstream news source. politicians don’t even try to pretend that they aren’t living in an alternate, self-centered reality. and ideoologically driven groups assert that a solution to a problem should not be implemented because it makes a previous solution to the problem seem less important. YES, THAT IS THE POINT OF NEW, MORE EFFECIENT/COMPREHENSIVE SOLUTIONS. WE NO LONGER HAVE TO DEAL WITH THE DRAWBACKS OF THE OLD SOLUTIONS.

if anyone has any more “2005 is the onion becoming reality” examples, let me know.

McLuhan quote for video iPod

Published

on 11/20/2005

. 5 Comments

From: John Joseph Bachir
To: MEA AT lists DOT ibiblio DOT org
Date: Nov 19, 2005 10:12 PM
Subject: M.M. quote

A very important academic issue: what is the best M.M. quote to get
engraved on my Video iPod?

Each new technology is a reprogramming of sensory life.

The most human thing about us is our technology.

In the electric age we wear all mankind as our skin.

Omnipresence has become an ordinary human dimension.

Commercial company offers money for open source bugfixes

Published

on 11/15/2005

. 5 Comments

This could be really neat. From Surfin’ Safari:

Karelia Software is working on an exciting new app that uses WebKit: Sandvox. This web authoring tool is shaping up to be rather spiffy and elegant. But they need your help. There’s a couple of bugs in WebKit which are impeding their progress and that they’d really like fixed soon. So they are generously offering bounties for fixes.

Except look at how much money they are offering. $250! They are asking expert developers to put their overhead, expertise, and time into solving another company’s problems. I can’t imagine that these bugs that Apple has not been able to fix yet will take any less than 10 hours for someone to fix. At a modest $100 an hour, they should be offering $1000 minumum per commited bug.

WI bill will require paper trail for electronic voting machines in WI

Published

on 11/12/2005

. 1 Comment

HOORAY!

With only four dissenting votes, the state Assembly easily passed a bill that would require that electronic voting machines create a paper record.

The goal of the legislation is to make sure that Wisconsin’s soon-to-be-purchased touch screen machines create a paper ballot that can be audited to verify election results.

“Wisconsin cannot go down the path of states like Florida and Ohio in having elections that the public simply doesn’t trust,” Rep. Mark Pocan, D-Madison, one of the bill’s co-sponsors, said in a news release. “By requiring a paper record on every electronic voting machine, we will ensure that not only does your vote matter in Wisconsin, but it also counts.”

The bill, which was co-sponsored by Rep. Steve Freese, R-Dodgeville, has also been introduced in the state Senate, where it awaits action.

Gov. Jim Doyle applauded the Assembly’s passage of the bill.

[snip]

you know your country is in bad shape when you read a pat buchanan article and it makes you wax nostalgic for the reagan years

Published

on 11/11/2005

. 0 Comments

Pat Buchanan wrote this article in Human Events. Some excerpts:

Under Bush II, social spending has exploded to levels LBJ might envy, foreign aid has been doubled, pork-at-every-meal has become the GOP diet of choice, surpluses have vanished, and the deficit is soaring back toward 5% of GDP. Bill Clinton is starting to look like Barry Goldwater.

Both Bushes embraced the “open borders” immigration policy the Wall Street Journal has trumpeted for two decades. Result: We have 10-15 million illegal aliens in our country, among whom gangs like the murderous Mara Salvatrucha are proliferating. Native-born California taxpayers are fleeing the Golden State, as Third World tax consumers pour in. So great is the crisis on the Mexican border even the liberal Democratic governors of New Mexico and Arizona have declared states of emergency. Meanwhile 35,000 U.S. troops stand guard—on the border of South Korea.

Thus, in March, 2003, Bush, in perhaps the greatest strategic blunder in U.S. history, invaded an Arab nation that had not attacked us, did not want war with us, and did not threaten us—to strip it of weapons we now know it did not have.

Result: Shia and Kurds have been liberated from Saddam, but Iran has a new ally in southern Iraq, Osama has a new base camp in the Sunni Triangle, the Arab and Islamic world have been radicalized against the United States, and copy-cat killers of Al Qaida have been targeting our remaining allies in Europe and the Middle East: Spain, Britain, Egypt and Jordan. And, lest we forget, 2055 Americans are dead and Walter Reed is filling up.

True to the neoconservative creed, Bush launched a global crusade for democracy that is now bringing ever closer to power Hamas in Gaza and the West Bank, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and Syria, and Shia fundamentalists in Baghdad and Basra.

Democratic imperialism is still imperialism. To Arab and Islamic peoples, whether the Crusaders come in the name of God or in the name of democracy, they are still Crusaders.

When Ronald Reagan went home to California, his heirs said, “Goodbye to all that,” and embraced Big Government conservatism, then neoconservatism. If they do not find their way home soon, to the principles of Taft, Goldwater and Reagan, they will perish in the wilderness into which they have led us all.

Kuro5hin article on riots in France

Published

on 11/8/2005

. 0 Comments

Kuro5hin has a very well put together article on the current rioting in france. link

nmap alternative to using telnet to test the status of a port/daemon

Published

on 11/3/2005

. 0 Comments

$ nmap -sT -p22,80 blog.johnjosephbachir.org

Starting nmap 3.93 ( http://www.insecure.org/nmap/ ) at 2005-11-03 01:48 EST
Interesting ports on basic-linus.olympic.dreamhost.com (64.111.108.87):
PORT   STATE SERVICE
22/tcp open  ssh
80/tcp open  http

Nmap finished: 1 IP address (1 host up) scanned in 0.736 seconds
$