Time To Move!

Okay, I've finally got most of the features of the new page working. I've also got about half the links changed, and yes, as feared my ranking has dropped to microbe status.

But that's temporary. Really...

Anyway I'm still working on the comments format, whether to use a pop-up pane or the same browser window. And I have not decided on a menu system I like yet. Each one I've tried is a bit cumbersome on the page, and my goal for the new page is speed, sharpness and ease of reading.

So there may be a few minor tweaks and additions as the days go on, but as of now I'm going to officially start blogging from the new page. So if everyone could please change their links and bookmarks over I'd really appreciate it.

The archives will still be here, for anyone interested in the older stuff, and I will put links to those on my new page. I will be shutting down the comments here in a bit, just to keep the spam out. And in a few days I'll put up a forwarding link in the template code here, so any new readers will be sent to the new page.

Thanks for reading! Hope to see everybody at the new page!

Still Here, But The New Site Is Almost Ready

Just another update on the new site. It's looking good, I think. I've finally got the comments working, and the permalink stuff ironed out. It's a lot faster loading than Blogger, which is awesome.

I've modified the layout just a tad, made the page lighter and hopefully easier to read. I'll be adding a few more features for menus and maybe some RSS. Nothing too fancy that would slow down the page.

I have not transfered over all my links yet, and for the next few days I'll continue to cross post back to here, but I'll probably go ahead and start officially blogging from the new site come this weekend.

So head on over!

The Fact Filter

Thomas Sowell has a new column out where he speaks to the issue of demagoguery by politicians and the media. He makes some extremely good points and reveals quite a few facts that I had not read before. But then again...I get my information from the news media.

People who urge us to rely on the United Nations, instead of acting "unilaterally," or who urge us to follow other countries in creating a government-run medical care system, often show not the slightest interest in getting facts about the actual track record of either the UN or government-run medical systems.

Those who believe in affirmative action likewise usually see no reason to find out what actually happens under such policies, as distinguished from what they wish, hope, or imagine happens.

The crusade for "a living wage" that will enable a worker to support a family proceeds without the slightest interest in finding out whether most people who are making low wages actually have any family to support -- much less seeking out the facts about what actually happens after the government sets wages.

Nor does the media tell you that many people classified as "poor" are actually college students, or that many people classified as "poor" do not in fact stay poor, but move up in the world due to raises, job changes, economic booms - in other words, part of the natural order of progress. But these facts are never revealed, let alone debated in any meaningful way. It's too detrimental to the political establishments, the standard media lines, and sadly, many people's solidified preconceptions.

Facts that go against preconceived notions are likely to be ignored, even by many scholars. For example, slavery is an issue that is widely discussed as if it were something peculiar to Africans enslaved by Europeans, instead of something suffered and inflicted around the world by people of every race, color, and religion.

Two books about more European slaves brought to North Africa than there were African slaves brought to America have been published in recent years. They are "Christian Slaves, Muslim Masters" by Robert Davis and "White Gold" by Giles Milton. Both books have been largely ignored by the media and academia alike -- and the first went out of print, less than 6 months after being published.

The issue of slavery is a difficult one. Name one race in the history of the world that has not been subjected to enslavement over their long history. What has happened over that time to force a change in how slavery is perceived and talked about? Why does the entire world talk about slavery as though it were only an African-American issue? How many people are enslaved in the world today? In what way do free societies or the media or (God help us) the U.N. bring light to those people?

Well considering that many of the countries that further the sex slave trade, the servant trade, the illegal immigrant trade are in fact a part of the U.N. anyway, and that countries like Libya and Sudan have held prominent positions on U.N. councils for Human Rights, apparently nothing all that meaningful as far as the international community is concerned - unless of course they're condeming the U.S. for Guantanamo.


Crossposted at the new site.

Apple To Run Windows

So what are we up to now? Three? Four signs of the apocalypse?

Apple Rises on News That Intel Macs Will Run Windows

Apple Computer Inc. on Wednesday unveiled new software that allows Intel-based Macs to run Microsoft Corp.'s Windows XP software. Apple shares rose nearly 7 percent in early trading.

"Apple has no desire or plan to sell or support Windows, but many customers have expressed their interest to run Windows on Apple 's superior hardware now that we use Intel processors," Philip Schiller, Apple senior vice president of worldwide product marketing, said in a statement.

Boot Camp makes it easier to install Windows software on an Intel-based Mac, with a step-by-step guide. It also lets users choose to use either Mac OS X software, or the Windows software when they restart their computer.

Nothing says "grudgingly" like a "superior hardware" dig. True, the hardware is superior, but so was betamax. No, this is about money, market share and the future of Apple, no doubt about it.

New Blog Site!

Within the coming week or so, I'm going to be moving this blog to a new site.

Right now I'm in the process of constructing it, so blogging over there will be sporadic and mostly test related. But feel free to go on over and take a look. Hopefully the page looks okay in your browser. Firefox and IE seem to work fine. I can't vouch for Safari or Opera. So any users who find a major compatibility problem, email or comment (I think comments are working...for now at least) and I'll look into it.

Blogger has been good for posting, but I wanted more control, more room, and my own favicon (yes, I wanted the icon).

Anyway so within about a week my page ranking is going to drop off the face of the earth as I start transfering all my links over, so please link and bookmark the new page. Either here or here, both links work.

And then after I get the new page up and running I'm going to put a forwarding link on this main page to send everyone to the new page.

Hopefully the transition will go smoothly. Hopefully...

GM's Best (And Maybe Last) Car

The new Corvette Z06. Pretty darn cool.

"You have the car everyone wants right now." Souls are ice-skating in Hell. Pigs are airborne. The guy handing the Corvette Z06 the ultimate accolade wasn't a sixty-year-old Midwestern mid-life muscle car maniac. It was a BMW M3 owner fresh from the track at the Motorsport Ranch roadcourse in Houston. General Motors may be on Death Watch, but its Chevrolet-branded halo car has, after 53-years, ascended to the top of the honest-to-God sports car category. Of course, even Euro-snobs are susceptible to baseless hype. Well guess what? The Z06 is all that, and more.

The "Threatened" Society

The courage of celebrities knows no bounds.

Susan Sarandon wants the U.S. presidential elections to be monitored by outside interests. The "Bull Durham" star says that the 2004 vote was so fraudulent that we need international oversight — like troubled third-world countries do.

Her assessment of President Bush’s administration isn’t upbeat either. "I think we’ve never been as close to George Orwell's '1984' as before," she said. "We live in a society where individual rights and legality are definitely threatened and that’s scary."

She obviously has not received her latest update of Newspeak. "Threatened", "scary", "rights", "legality" - she's commiting thought crimes all over the place. And that's double plus ungood.

No doubt the thought police will be along to question her any minute. Good that we all just move along.

DeLay Is Calling It Quits

Tom DeLay Says He Will Give Up His Seat

Rep. Tom DeLay, whose iron hold on the House Republicans melted as a lobbying corruption scandal engulfed the Capitol, told TIME that he will not seek reelection and will leave Congress within months. Taking defiant swipes at "the left" and the press, he said he feels "liberated" and vowed to pursue an aggressive speaking and organizing campaign aimed at�promoting foster care, Republican candidates and a closer connection between religion and government.

"I'm going to announce tomorrow that I'm not running for reelection and that I'm going to leave Congress," DeLay, who turns 59 on Saturday, said during a 90-minute interview on Monday. "I'm very much at peace with it." He notified President Bush in the afternoon. DeLay and his wife, Christine, said they had been prepared to fight, but that he decided last Wednesday, after months of prayer and contemplation, to spare his suburban Houston district the mudfest to come. "This had become a referendum on me," he said. "So it's better for me to step aside and let it be a referendum on ideas, Republican values and what's important for this district."

DeLay's fall has been stunningly swift, one of the most brutal and decisive in American history. He had to give up his title of Majority Leader, the No. 2 spot in the House Republican leadership, in September when a Texas grand jury indicted him on charges of trying to evade the state's election law. So he moved out of his palatial suite in the Capitol, where he once brandished a "No Whining" mug during feisty weekly sessions with reporters, and moved across the street to the Cannon House Office Building, home of many freshmen.

The surprise decision was based on the sort of ruthless calculation that had once given him unchallenged dominance of House Republicans and their wealthy friends in Washington's lobbying community: he realized he might lose in this November's election. DeLay got a scare in a Republican primary last month, and a recent poll taken by his campaign gave him a roughly 50-50 shot of winning, in an election season when Republicans need every seat they can hang onto to avoid a Democratic takeover of the House.

"I'm a realist. I've been around awhile. I can evaluate political situations," DeLay told TIME at his kitchen table in Sugar Land, a former sugar plantation in suburban Houston.� Bluebonnets are blooming along the highways. "I feel that I could have won the race. I just felt like I didn't want to risk the seat and that I can do more on the outside of the House than I can on the inside right now. I want to continue to fight for the conservative cause. I want to continue to work for a Republican majority."

Asked if he had done anything illegal or immoral in public office, DeLay replied curtly, "No." Asked if he'd done anything immoral, he said with a laugh, "We're all sinners." Asked what he would do differently, he said, "Nothing." He denied having failed to adequately supervise members of his staff, even though two of his former aides have pleaded guilty to committing crimes while on his staff. "Two people violated my trust over 21 years," he said. "I guarantee you if other offices were under the scrutiny I've been under in the last 10 years, with the Democrat Party announcing that they're going to destroy me, destroy my reputation, and that's how they're going to get rid of me, I guarantee you you're going to find, out of hundreds of people, somebody that's probably done something wrong."

DeLay brushed off the torrent of investigative news articles questioning the funding behind the golf, private planes and resort hotels that marked his travel at home and abroad. He even accepted a plane from R.J. Reynolds Tobacco to go to his arraignment. "There's nothing wrong with it," he said. "They had a plane available. My schedule was such that I couldn't do it commercially — that I had to get up there and then get back and do my job. And that's the only plane that was available at the time."

"You can't prove to me one thing that I have done for my own personal gain," he added. "Yes, I play golf. I'm very proud of the fact that I play golf. It's the only thing that I do for myself. And when you go to a country and you're there for seven days and you take an afternoon off to play golf, what does the national media write? All about the golf, not about the meeting that went to. I'm not ashamed of anything I've done. I've never done anything in my political career for my own personal gain. You can look at my bank account and my house to understand that."

"I don't care what history writes, " he continued. "What I care about, what's important to me is who I am, what I've done and what I can accomplish in the future. What I care about it what I believe in and how I conduct myself in fighting for what I believe in."

(h/t The Corner)

Michelle Malkin has lots more. Also see the Washington Post story on the resignation.

24 Tonight

Okay, so where are we this season? (By the way, I apologize if I don't get to do any linking tonight, as I've been swamped recently with a new webpage design. I promise more links next week.)

So far the plot has consisted of Jack returning from the dead, while Tony, Michelle, Edgar, McGill, Walt and Palmer have gone off to seriously get dead. Jack has a new girlfriend, who, along with her son, has since disappeared. We have terrorists fighting each other over nerve gas canisters, some of which have been released into malls, hospitals and CTU.

Kim has returned, along with someone named Barry - who appears to be some type of psychologist (And he's dating Kim? What the hell is wrong with him?). Anyway, of course, as soon as she shows up, the four horsemen saddle up everyone starts dying.

So then she left. Where she's gone nobody knows, but I'm sure they're a trail of bodies in her wake. Though what the writers left in her place was not much better...Audrey.

Yes...Audrey.

Now we're very upset about this. Last week was the perfect opportunity for the show writers to demonstrate that they care about their fans. Audrey was implicated by Collette (the underwear model) as the government contact who sold her the schematics to a gas facility. (Yes, they were going to gas a gas facility...) Anyway, Collette named Audrey, by name(!), as the contact. She could have been Nina Myers' twin sister (no, not evil twin. Nina was already evil, so therefore she need only be her twin).

Moving on... So CTU took Audrey into custody. And Jack questioned her. And she cried. And he believed her! Then he fought the guards who tried to take her away. It doesn't matter that she eventually did turn out to be innocent, that Henderson set up the entire thing as a way to confuse CTU and get them chasing their tail. This was their chance to bump her off. If poor Michelle had to die, then evil Audrey should have gone too.

But, alas, it was not to be. Anyway, rant over. Audrey lived to annoy another day (and somehow live with the fact that now the entire world knows she has fallen for two terrorist sympathizers, Walt Cummings, and her ex-husband Paul, who Jack killed).

Meanwhile, the terrorists from this season (yes, I was beginning to think we'd lost them again) show back up again and take out some cops, and they use the police cars and equipment to move the gas canisters to their next terror target.

Chloe, still at her computer, is digging up dirt on Henderson again, and to help her dig CTU sends her an Edgar mid-season replacement named Shari. Not sure what her story is except that she hates the Homeland Security guy because he harassed her. Though of course by the end of the episode she has some type of allergic reaction to Buchanan walking within a foot of her - so I'm going to just throw up the "ODD" label and leave her be for now. Chloe used to have the "ODD" tag...actually, Chloe still does have that tag, but she's added to her collection, now holding the "TECH GENIUS" and "PERIMETER SETTING, SOCKET-PACKET, DATA MINING GURU".

Anyway, back at the President's camp, Agent Pierce's spidey sense started tingling. Wayne Palmer never arrived for their meeting. So Agent Pierce a) raises the alarm, b) organizes a posse, c) forgets the entire thing, or d) tells one person (who will probably turn up dead this week) and goes off alone looking for Palmer. If you said D, you lose. It's "d)". But Agent Pierce is a pretty cool character, so he's allowed to go outside of common sense every now and again. And sure enough, suspending disbelief for another few minutes paid off, because Pierce finds Wayne Palmer. Palmer was on the run, though somehow had appropriated a machine gun.

Meanwhile, the terrorists show up at the gas facility. It turns out to be a natural gas facility. Yes, taking down nuclear facilities and the like, sure that's scary. But go after normal people's hot water heaters and cook-tops, and oh my word the panic...the panic!! I mean really, if you can't cook with gas anymore, you'd have to grill outside...with wood or...charcoal...

Just think of the carcinogens. We'd all die within a matter of decades.

Anyway, suspending disbelief, suspending disbelief...(we're going to need this strength). Why, you ask? Because after Jack saves Audrey, and cries, and they finally get it out of Collette that the target is a gas facility (yet they don't know which one), Shari...yes, Shari, says that she was a Chemistry major, and that the pressure of natural gas would have to be lowered in order for the nerve agent to remain viable. Now while this is a true-ish statement, the revelation was rendered rather corny as Chloe, having ready-made hacks, passwords, knowledge of each gas company's internal intranet server and web layout, and some nifty GUI interfaces, is through the gas system in no time and comes up with the plant in trouble.

Meanwhile Agent Pierce and Wayne Palmer are running from gunfire and someone with a rocket launcher. (Yes, this plotline was more exciting) Wayne is injured, badly, but Agent Pierce saves the day, taking out terrorists and then saving Wayne Palmer and making a getaway.

Now the terrorists in the gas facility are causing all kinds of havoc, killing people, and setting up the system to carry the deadly gas through the natural gas lines and into people's homes. Jack and Curtis and the CTU strike teams are up in the choppers, and Chloe is filling them in on heat signatures, gas pressure, the perimeter, security, the weather and the price of natural gas.

The strike teams go in, and there's a whole lot of shooting. (Yes, the description is sparse, but really, that's about all that happened). Chloe and the chemistry major are monitoring the pressure while the gun battle commences, but it's too late, despite all of the perimeter setting and thigh shooting, the gas is released. (And incidentally, why in the heck would anyone remove the silencer off a weapon if it was working? Why alert the terrorists to their presence?).

Suspension of disbelief, suspension of disbelief...okay, better now.

So the gun battle ends, and the head terrorist escapes, but the gas is being released, somehow from an open room(?) and into the gas lines. So the only thing left to do is to shut off the gas line...to shut down the line at the street...to tell people to exit their homes and not panic...to blow out the gas main down the street to blow up the entire gas facility! Well, it is TV, and it wouldn't be "24" without something blowing up.

So Jack primes the building to explode, setting some C-4 on a gas main and setting the timer. But then - he sees the lead terrorist Bierko! Jack gives chase, but can't shoot the terrorist in the thigh before the explosives go off. The two fight it out, but the explosions and fire hamper both of them. Bierko is trying to escape in the stolen cop car when the episode ends.

No wait, there is a huge explosion, and Jack pulls Bierko into the car for cover just as the entire area is consumed by fire.

And that was it. So our hero went down fighting and then saving a terrorist, and the gas attack was thwarted (and thank God there are now NO MORE CANISTERS). Agent Pierce saved Wayne Palmer, and hopefully we'll find out just what David gave his brother before he died. Chloe is still awesome, but her computer is a bit over the top now. Sheri the chemist is annoying and odd, but not as annoying as Audrey, who is still alive, and back, and innocent, and made Jack cry. Though now Jack might be dead.

But he can do that, he's the star of the show, and he's already died twice.

So let's see what tonight's episode brings! (for previous synopsis, see here, here, here, and here)

The Only National Health Care We Can Afford

Laughter really is the best medicine

It might be regarded as a statement of the obvious. But scientists have proved what everyone else takes for granted - that laughter really is good for you. It turns out that even the anticipation of watching a funny video can raise the levels of immune-boosting hormones in the blood and the benefits can last up to a day.

Dr Berk said that laughter diminished the secretion of the body's stress hormones, cortisol and epinephrine, while enhancing immune response. "In addition, mirthful laughter boosts secretion of growth hormone, an enhancer of these same key immune responses. The physiological effects of a single one-hour session viewing a humorous video has appeared to last up to 12 to 24 hours in some individuals."

Previous experiments have shown that watching comical videos can offset the symptoms of long-term stress, a condition that is known to weaken the immune system's response to viruses and tumours.

Dr Berk concluded: "It may sound corny but we in the health care medical sciences need to get serious about happiness and the lifestyle that produces it, relative to mind, body and spirit. Why do you think Reader's Digest has claimed that laughter is the best medicine for so many years?"

Ha.

Terrorists Praise The Media

It seems the terrorists used kidnapped reporter Jill Carroll to create a propaganda video, where in it she blames the U.S. and Bush for...well, everything obviously.

American journalist Jill Carroll, who was released this week after being held hostage in Iraq for almost three months, has slammed the United States and praised Iraqi insurgents in a video posted on an Islamist Web site.

A counterterrorism expert says Carroll may have been experiencing a touch of Stockholm syndrome, a defense mechanism in which kidnap victims empathize with their captors. However, Carroll's father flatly said his daughter was merely giving the kidnappers what they wanted so she wouldn't be killed.

In the video, Carroll discusses her release with a man who may be one of her captors. She says that the mujahedeen has treated her well, kept her safe and was able to elude the U.S. military because its members are "very smart."

She also calls the war "illegal" and says President George Bush needs to stop it.

"The mujahedeen are the ones that will win in the end," she says, adding that the insurgents "are good people fighting an honorable fight while the Americans are here as an occupying force treating the people in a very bad way."

I don't doubt she did what she had to do to survive. But one does have to wonder about the Stockholm syndrome.

Of even more interest to me is the portion of the article that CNN buried at the bottom:

A man, presumably a member of the Brigades of Vengeance, which has claimed responsibility for Carroll's kidnapping, reads a statement in Arabic at the end of the video.

He levels an accusation at U.S. troops, saying they "show off their power by going around killing innocent, unarmed people, but they're unable to free [Carroll] and were unable to stop us from abducting her."

He also said Carroll was released only after the U.S. government partially met the group's demands by releasing some female prisoners it had in custody -- a claim U.S. authorities deny -- and he praises reporters in general as "friends and brothers to the mujahedeen."

And who says that terrorists aren't paying attention?