Archive for October, 2006
Project Valour-IT has raised over $18,000 in just one day. That’s great, but there’s a long way to go.
Also, Team Air Force has pulled up into second place, just $200 behind Army as of right now. (What did we do, retire a B-52 early to get the money?)
Please consider donating to this very worthy cause.
Came across this on Dean’s World:
Why I’m voting Democrat in November:
by Andrew CoryWe said we would never forget 9/11. We took a solemn vow over the bodies of our murdered countrymen. It’s been 5 years. Osama bin Laden is still around, still alive, still making videos. I want bin Laden dead. The Republican Party hasn’t delivered. Perhaps the Democrats will…
This seems odd to Murdoc.
A) What’s the Dems’ plan? “Get out of Iraq” seems to be about all I’ve heard about, but even that particular “plan” has been very short of details.
B) What videos?
C) Murdoc still thinks that there’s at least a 75% chance the guy has been dead for quite some time.
I’m not necessarily saying the Republicans have done swimmingly in the War on Terror. I just don’t see that the Democrats have offered anything meaningful in the way of an alternative strategy.
And this declaration by Mr. Cory seems just senseless and pointless.
And as for the Democrats getting bin Laden, a commenter writes:
(cough)1998(cough)
In Glenn Reynolds’ TCS Daily column on electronic voting:
Because you can’t tell what’s going on inside of the box, voters can’t be sure that their votes are recorded, or counted, accurately. And if they can’t be sure of that, their faith in the whole electoral system is in danger — and with it, their faith in our system of government…
I’ve written about this problem before – and more than once – but the issue of trustworthiness in voting and vote-counting is really important, and I still think that it’s not getting enough attention…
The system must not merely be fair and reliable, it must be seen as fair and reliable by all reasonable people. Kooks and conspiracists will always be, well, kooky and conspiratorial. But the system needs to be trustworthy enough, and obviously so, that only the kooks and conspiracists, who are beyond reason, will seriously worry about its trustworthiness. [emphasis Murdoc's]
This is exactly what Murdoc has been saying all along. Although my prediction of electoral apocalypse in 2004 turned out to be wrong (thankfully) even though the exact conditions that I said would set if off came to be, the long-term implications of this abomination are still very real.
I wrote in May of 2004:
The problem with electronic voting, especially electronic voting without a paper trail, is not that it’s insecure. I imagine, after some work, it can be made pretty tight. The problem is that we will always suspect that it’s insecure. No patches, no service packs, no little paper receipt will ever change our distrust of the machines.
The President:
“The United States favors an Iraq that offers its people freedom at home. I categorically reject arguments that this is unattainable due to Iraq’s history or its ethnic or sectarian make-up. Iraqis deserve and desire freedom like everyone else.”
Seems reasonable. I happen to agree 100%.
Read the rest of this entry »
John Kerry supporting the troops, not the war:
“You know, education, if you make the most of it, if you study hard and you do your homework, and you make an effort to be smart, uh, you, you can do well. If you don’t, you get stuck in Iraq.”
Audio on Hot Air.
In Dem stars rally in area for Angelides: Candidate touts his education reforms, the Whittier Daily News reports that the reaction to his comments was a
mixture of laughter and gasps.
Kerry was campaigning for California gubernatorial candidate Phil Angelides at Pasadena City College. Why anyone would let Kerry speak at one of their rallies is beyond me. (via Wizbang)
UPDATE: Actually, now that I think about it, I would guess that the education level in the US military is really quite high. I realize that standards have been lowered slightly of late, but all in all the number of degreed military personnel (if that’s how one would like to define “well-educated”) would probably surprise most people.
UPDATE 2: I hadn’t thought of this, but an update at Hot Air notes that Kerry had completed college (Yale, no less) and then joined the Navy. He is just so clueless it boggles the mind.
Murdoc has been drafted! And to make it worse, it’s the Air Force! I asked only one thing…could I please be assigned to an A-10 unit. John at OpFor, my squadron CO, said “No problem, Airman Murodc!” so I reported for duty.
Getting drafted isn’t any fun, but it’s for a very worthy cause: Project VALOUR-IT (Voice-Activated Laptops for OUR Injured Troops). Here’s the scoop on this very cool campaign:
Project Valour-IT, in memory of SFC William V. Ziegenfuss, provides voice-controlled laptop computers to wounded Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Marines recovering from hand and arm injuries or amputations at home or in military hospitals. Operating laptops by speaking into a microphone, our wounded heroes are able to send and receive messages from friends and loved ones, surf the ‘Net, and communicate with buddies still in the field without having to press a key or move a mouse. The experience of CPT Charles “Chuck” Ziegenfuss, a partner in the project who suffered severe hand wounds while serving in Iraq, illustrates how important this voice-controlled software can be to a wounded servicemember’s recovery.
Tell me that isn’t cool.
To make things way more cool yet, there’s a friendly little competition going on right now to raise money for the effort. The four military services each have a team of bloggers (with some activated reserves and civilian draftees to fill out the ranks) working to help raise a bit of cash. We want to collect $180,000.
Yes, you read that right. $180,000.
So go ahead and hit the donation button. A buck or two (or ten or twenty) via PayPal can help change things for our seriously injured troops. You can also mail donations. They are tax-deductible.
Regardless of the team you donate through, all proceeds will be used wherever they’re needed. So donate to the Air Force team.
If you blog or run a web site, please consider joining a team and posting the donation badge. The competition runs through November 10th.
Picture of Murdoc’s plum assignment below.
Read the rest of this entry »
F-117: A long, storied history that is about to end
Senior Airman Justin Byars marshals in an F-117 Nighthawk for an end of runway inspection before takeoff from the Holloman Air Force Base N.M. The stealth fighter was one 25 Nighthawks that flew in a formation celebrating the plane’s 25th Anniversary. Airman Byars is a crew chief with the 49th Aircraft Maintenance Squadron. (U.S. Air Force photo/Senior Airman Brian Ferguson)
The dickering about how many F-117s to keep in service and for how long will go on for quite some time, despite the tone of the story.
Seems to me that the Israelis might a good candidate for a squadron of these things as our F-22s come online. On the other hand, I believe that the F-35 Lightning’s radar cross section is supposedly only half that of the F-117, so maybe some of those would make a lot more sense.
Also, has anyone heard anything about the gray-paint F-117 “Dayhawks” in action? The plane was apparently in use over two years ago, but I haven’t heard a peep since then.
My apologies for the mess here at MO this weekend. I’ve been doing some major upgrades and site maintenance. Things aren’t 100% done, but it should be the end of outages and major mashups.
As noted in the earlier post about comments (which are now re-opened, BTW), TypeKey registration is now an option. (UPDATE: It’s currently an option…as in not required.) I encourage you to utilize it if you have an account, and to get registered if you don’t. It’s free and easy.
This weekend I moved to a new host, upgraded to the latest version of Movable Type, reorganized my server, um, organization, and upgraded the comments section. I’ve also cut back slightly on the number of ads showing on the site.
All in all, I hope this all makes for a better experience for MO readers. As always, if you see anything mashupped, please let me know. I do all my site design myself (guilty as charged) and I’m not quite perfect all the time.
UPDATE: In a development that should surprise no one, the TypeKey thing doesn’t seem to work here with Internet Explorer. I’m running IE 6 here. I’ll check it with IE 7 tomorrow.
As I said (and I left a much fuller explanation in a comment to this post), TypeKey is not currently required to comment here. It’s an option for the future.
Whether you plan to utilze TypeKey or not, Murdoc suggests giving Firefox a try.
UPDATE 2: Hurray! TypeKey sign-in doesn’t seem to work here with IE7 either. I’m assuming it’s a problem on my site somewhere, but it’s working fine with Firefox and Opera. It’d be easier for me if you all just switched.
If you can read this it means you’re seeing MO at the new server.
UPDATE: Thank Pete.
There may be a few oddities over the next couple of days. If you happen to see anything persistently weird drop me a line.
Improving to serve you better
UPDATE 2 (Sunday morning): Once again was off the air for most of the night waiting for some DNS stuff to propogate. Everything seems to be back up and running. Let me know if you can’t read this.
What a pain in the donkey.
MO is undergoing maintenance and upgrades. Comments will be closed for the weekend. Sorry for the inconvenience.
UPDATE: There might be some weirdness here over the next couple of days. Don’t worry about it. Everything will be back to normal (such as it is) as soon as possible.
UPDATE 2 (Sunday afternoon): Okay. Comments are reopened.
You will notice that signing in via TypeKey is now an option. I encourage you to do so if you have an account, and to get yourself a free TypeKey account if you don’t as I will probably be implementing required registration in the near future. I’ve been holding out against it, but things have been a mess in the comments section lately and I’d like to straighten it out. Regulars will be marked ‘Trusted’ and will not only be published immediately, they won’t be restricted from posting multiple comments in quick succession. This has been a complaint of some some regulars.
Also, each comment now has a peramlink so you can link directly to it if you feel the need.
TypeKey seems pretty painless. If you have strong feelings one way or the other about it, please let me know.
