The view from Outside

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. [...]

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 [...]

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. [...]

I disliked the phrase, “America, love it or leave it” when it made the rounds in the ’60s, and I dislike it now. I don’t see how any thinking adult can claim to love the freedoms we enjoy while mouthing such un-American sentiments.
I am grateful daily for having been born in America. Considering my personality, [...]

As an official outsider, I feel it’s my role to, as frequently as possible, take the road less traveled. In fact, if I can find a path no one has yet trod, that’s the way I’m going.
In keeping with this philosophy, a few years ago I began using Linux as an alternative to [...]

The events at Virginia Tech this week are horrific.
Horrific, too, though on a lesser scale,  has been the news coverage.  Combine those two factors as has happened more frequently of late and you wind up with an even worse outcome.  The public demands, and the government attempts to legislate, laws that can address every single [...]

Being an lover of the absurd, I was delighted to come across the following contest / challenge, now in its second year.
We all know that a good plot to blow up an airplane will cause the banning, or at least screening, of something innocuous. If you stop and think about it, it’s a stupid response. [...]

Circuit City to Cut More Than 3,500 Store and IT Jobs, Cut Wages
Circuit City isn’t just laying off workers. These days that would hardly make the news wires. They are doing something unusual. In my over 20 years of retail management I’ve never heard of a company pulling a stunt like this.
The [...]

All groups that are organized around a central theme have their heroes, someone who shares their belief or stance but is more public, more noticed than most.  Someone who took that shared belief to the next level of public expression.
Gays are no different. From George Takei on StarTrek to Christopher Isherwood in the [...]