outsider

Users of electronics relate to their devices through a graphic user interface, or GUI. The iPhone and iPod Touch have received a lot of accolades for their revolutionary user interface. Some users buy their phones based largely on the user interface. Whether your computer runs Windows, Linux or Macintosh, most of your interaction with your [...]

I’ve been saying this for years; in fact, since I “owned” my first cat. Cats are aliens - from what planet, I don’t know. Most of them are observing humans and by some means, likely telepathic, reporting their findings back to their home planet.
Casper, which is 12 years old, boards the No. 3 service at [...]

The last time I posted here the country was already crowning Obama as the reincarnation of Kennedy, or is it FDR? He was being proclaimed as the savior of America. Even moderate Republicans were beginning to wax hopeful.
Since then we’ve been jolted back to reality. Obama isn’t a god, he’s not even a Kennedy Democrat.
Recently [...]

Is this the image of America we want to represent our country? Does this conjure up ideas of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness? Is this the legacy we want to leave our children?
This is so reminiscent of the Democratic Convention in the 60s.
In the last 40 years we’ve witnessed a government that has [...]

L.A. Times article:
The former Army scientist who was the prime suspect in the deadly 2001 anthrax mailings agreed Friday to take $5.82 million from the government to settle his claim that the Justice Department and the FBI invaded his privacy and ruined his career.
Dr. Steven J. Hatfill, 54, who was called a “person of interest” [...]

Now that I’ve dumped all over GoDaddy, let me add that I will give them a thumbs-up in one regard.  Only once before have I received a personal phone call from the president of a company to follow up on a complaint.  He was gracious, didn’t attempt to excuse GoDaddy’s actions and promised to look [...]

At first I wasn’t sure if GoDaddy was incompetent or purposely negligent. I’m still not sure. I am sure of one thing, though; a domain I’ve owned since 2005 has been sold out from under me.
I was contacted by GoDaddy sales a couple of months ago to renew my hosting plan. My [...]

Are you traveling this holiday season? Staying in a hotel? Here’s some food drink for thought.

We’ve got two controversial movies hitting the theaters this month, The Golden Compass and Expelled, No Intelligence Allowed.
The Golden Compass is being called a subversive attempt to spread atheism among children. Many churches are urging their members to abstain from viewing it.
Based on the first book of a trilogy called His Dark Materials by [...]

From Conservapedia Statistics:
There are 45,142 total pages in the database. This includes “talk” pages, pages about Conservapedia, minimal “stub” pages, redirects, and others that probably don’t qualify as content pages. Excluding those, there are 19,616 pages that are probably legitimate content pages.
5,920 files have been uploaded.
There have been a total of 37,901,420 page views, and [...]

Have airport security personnel gone completely insane? Have we created such an atmosphere of fear and xenophobia that no foreigner is safe traveling to the West any more? Do we need to disarm airport security people to prevent another lethal application of taser usage? “Don’t tase me, bro” was mildly humorous. [...]

The RIAA is rumored to have recently attempted to push a bill through Congress that would have allowed it to collect royalties every time a person is caught tapping their toe to a tune they hear in their head.
Thankfully the bill was crushed by Larry Craig, who said, “Toe tapping is a fundamental American right.”
[tags]RIAA, [...]

No More Mr. Nice Guy has written a piece so complete I simply want to repost it here for your consideration:
Phoenix is in many ways a microcosm of Georgebushistan. Our compassionate conservative uniter commander-in-chief is Joe Arpaio, Sheriff of Maricopa County, the vast sprawling county which includes most of metropolitan Phoenix.
Arpaio has held the office [...]

The FCC is a waste of money and energy. We don’t elect the members yet they have us by the gonads when it comes to the public airwaves. I could go on and on about what a poor excuse the FCC is as a governmental agency, but Penn and Teller are so [...]

I know everyone wants their 15 bytes of fame, but couldn’t this guy find an easier way to get it? At least this mashup is entertaining.
(Video removed as it breaks the template. Sorry.)
[tags]Florida, taser, protest[/tags]

Once again the fundamentalist response to 21st century thinking is to ban any book which challenges their 2000 year old mythology. Laura Green of the Palm Beach Post writes:
The Palm Beach County School Board refused to pull 80 books referencing homosexuality, atheism and abortion from the library shelves of two high schools.
But the mother fighting [...]

Southern Baptists are up in arms over a proposed hate crimes bill, officially titled the Matthew Shepard Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act (S. 1105), that would establish a new federal offense for so-called “hate crimes” and add “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” as protected classes, as well as mandate a separate federal criminal [...]

This rating was determined based on the presence of the following words:

gay (12x)
gays (9x)
dangerous (2x)
kill (1x)

If you’re under 17, I guess I have to insist you close your eyes before reading this blog so you aren’t corrupted by concepts like gays and danger.
[tags]mingle2, parental warnings[/tags]

Outsiders are not simply malcontents. They are the people who don’t always fit into society as smoothly as others. The are the ignored, the passed-by, the unimportant. Those are seldom attributes they assign themselves; they’re assigned by others.
But there are those outsiders who have found the nugget of value within themselves. [...]