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> they will push for the introduction of halal (clean by Islamic standards) food,

OMG, they will buy food that they like, the end of civilization is nigh!

> , thereby securing food preparation jobs for Muslims. T

And lo, the Union of Koranic Kitchen Workers soon dominated the land!

> They will increase pressure on supermarket chains to feature halal on their shelves -- along with threats for failure to comply.

Scary stuff, taking their business elsewhere, that's the worst kind of terrorism!

> 100% will usher in the peace of 'Dar-es-Salaam'

It will usher in the largest city in Tanzania?

> But what the hell. Celebrate diversity... while you can, anyway.

Turns out the original author of that cut-n-paste is Phil Aguilar. This is a guy in a 'christian' biker gang that likes to get in to bar fights with Hells Angels. So now you know what kind of expert this guy is on Islam. Real scholarly and all.

In the local paper today:

http://www.heraldnet.com/article/20110823/BIZ/708239852

Certification event for 787
Boeing will mark expected FAA approval of its Dreamliner jet with a ceremony Friday.
By Michelle Dunlop, Herald Writer
The Boeing Co. is planning an event Friday morning to mark certification of its 787 Dreamliner jet from the Federal Aviation Administration.

Boeing wrapped up flight testing on its mostly composite 787 on Aug. 13 and submitted its paperwork to the FAA for review.

Boeing expects to receive the FAA's approval on the Dreamliner this week and will hold a ceremony Friday at its Everett factory.

The jet maker plans to hand over the first 787 to Japan's All Nippon Airways in late September, more than three years late.

On Tuesday, ANA outlined its plans for flying the 787 commercially.

The carrier will fly the 787 with passengers for the first time Oct. 26 on a special charter flight from Tokyo to Hong Kong. The airplane will fly a return trip the following day.

ANA will fly 787 "excursion flights" on Oct. 28 and 29, departing from and returning to Tokyo, to allow interested travelers to experience the Dreamliner.

The 787's first regular commercial flight will be on Nov. 1, when ANA flies it from Tokyo's Haneda airport to Okayama, Japan. Beginning in December, ANA will use the 787 to fly between Tokyo and Beijing. In January, the airline will fly the Dreamliner on flights from Tokyo to Frankfurt, Germany.

ANA has 55 787s on order with Boeing. The jet maker has received orders for more than 800 Dreamliners.

Besides handing over the first 787 next month, Boeing also plans to deliver the first 747-8 freighter. The company received FAA certification last week on the upgraded 747 jumbo jet.

Most cheap UPS deliveries are handled by the USPS these days. They call it "UPS Mail Innovations". Some people don't like it when charged the full rate for UPS who just dumps it to the USPS for half.

Just in my local paper yesterday:

http://www.heraldnet.com/article/20090928/NEWS01/709289919#Marysvilles.high.schools.may.shift.to.a.later.first.bell

Kundu said national research supports a late start for high school students. A 2005 study published in the medical journal Pediatrics concluded that students have special needs in their sleep cycles and "school schedules are forcing them to lose sleep and to perform academically when they are at their worst."

Disclaimers: I live a few houses down from the station owner, so I've followed this for a while. I was a broadcast engineer in a past life (even did some contracting at a former iteration of this station.)

Here is the story from the local paper: http://www.heraldnet.com/article/20090905/NEWS01/709059909&news01ad=1 (good set of pictures)

From the Seattle Times version: "Andy Skotdal, general manager of the family-owned sports-radio station, isn't convinced ELF is responsible, even though the group's North American press office in Washington, D.C., issued a news release and posted an item on its national Web site Friday saying it was.

He suspects disgruntled locals who have long opposed the siting of the towers on 40 acres of farmland may have taken matters into their own hands after losing a key ruling in King County Superior Court a few weeks ago.

"My suspicion is, it's somebody local," Skotdal, whose family has owned the station for 20 years, said by phone Friday as he watched dozens of sheriff's detectives and FBI agents comb the property for evidence. "It could be somebody painting ELF on a banner to throw off suspicion."

In the same story, the FBI sees a few things that point to ELF but they are only a day into the investigation. I'd lay away from making a call right now on who is responsible.

Either way, stealing a excavator, driving it through a muddy field and pulling down two towers has to leave a good amount of evidence. I'm also thinking that the guy wires must have been cut too, just to keep from kill the machine operator on the first tower.

...Might ask themselves whether the annual $650 billion military budget (fully half of the world's total military expenditure) might be better spent on things other than raining death on other countries.

You know, like schools, hospitals, roads, fire stations, police, ... and oh yeah, the manned space programme.

Maybe the Boeing order could help save some local jobs?

http://www.heraldnet.com/article/20090110/BIZ/701109906#4500.losing.jobs.at.Boeing

EVERETT -- The Boeing Co.'s hiring spree came to an end Friday when the company announced it would cut 4,500 positions by the end of April.

"We are taking prudent actions to make sure Boeing remains well-positioned in today's difficult economic environment," said Scott Carson, president of Boeing Commercial Airplanes.

I believe Child's Play was created in response to this article - http://www.heraldnet.com/article/20031118/LIVING/311180742 At the bottom of the about page on Child's Play's site, the original PA news post, as well as the author's response is posted. The link to the original column doesn't work anymore, but I'm pretty sure that's the one. Apologies if this was posted elsewhere, I looked but didn't see it. And I'm on board with the opinion of if Gabe is aiming for some shameless self-promotion, that's perfectly fine with me. They've raised three million, maybe three and a half by now, for kids in children's hospitals in just five years, I think? Yeah, shameless self-promotion is alright with me.

I defer to your knowledge as a Boeing employee -- but rolling one out every three days isn't the same thing as doing the assembly in three days. I believe the plan for the 787 is for the plane to only spend three days on the assembly line.

It's a shame that the rollout is being delayed -- as of yesterday, newspapers were still saying 7/8/7 here and here Apparently the plane has been fully assembled and has been already been rolled from the assembly hangar to the paint hangar.

Thad Beier

Actually, many pesticides are at least somewhat effective nerve agents against mammals in high enough concentrations. Certain people can be extremely effected by certain pesticides over and above average reactions, too. Many of them are toxic in other ways instead of or in addition to being nerve agents in people. In the U.S., the EPA makes no suggestion that pesticides are not toxic to humans. They rate them by how toxic they are and how quickly they break down. They then clear some of them for use in certain concentrations with certain labels and certain restrictions on who can use some of them. Pesticides are known to be a danger to the nervous, endocrine, and reproductive systems. The health benefits of having higher yields and therefore cheaper prices on foods -- especially fruits and vegetables -- is often thought to outweigh the risks. This may be true when properly designed pesticides are properly used and your food is properly cleaned before you eat it. As with most things in life, though, there are trade-offs.

I, for one, have been in the emergency room for a number of hours before with what the doctors called giant hives due to exposure to pesticides. Giant hives are just like regular hives, only my hives were 2-3 inches wide, 4-8 inches long, and up to a quarter of an inch raised from the normal surface of the skin. They itch like hell, are pretty painful, they're very discolored, and they can last for days or weeks. They're caused by a number of things, but mine were caused by pesticide exposure. The doctors were monitoring to make sure my throat didn't close since I had such a strong reaction in the skin.

Lots of people are even saying that lower IQ scores, more asthma, and other health problems among children are due the amount of pesticides used in schools. ADD, Asperger's, and many of the issues that have been increasingly diagnosed are neurological in nature. Those rates may or may not have something to do with pesticides. The truth is, no one really knows what the levels of pesticides in U.S. schools is doing to kids. The EPA has guidelines to reduce exposure due to suspicion that it can't be good to have children inundated with the stuff. The state of Washington a few years ago pass a law stating that parents must be notified when there children's schools would be using pesticides. The state of New York has a nice writeup on a study it did in which it states that 87% of schools in NY used pesticides, that no pesticide be considered completely safe, and lists the more usual effects of several common pesticides and herbicides.

It seems that you've underestimated the malware writers. check it out.

-jcr

Wow, you just really are not paying attention.

The paper is the Everett Herald, the reporter is Jeff Switzer, who wrote the referenced article about me in Tuesday's paper. I linked to a journal entry that linked to it, but if you still need it, it's right here. He showed up at the preordained time of noon mentioned in the article, where I exchanged pleasantries with some of the people in attendance, including elections manager Carolyn Diepenbrock, who had already heard about the problem when I mentioned it, and she and I spoke of it with Mr. Switzer taking notes. I then voted and reported back to both of them that the problem was still happening, and then Ms. Diepenbrock took me over to where the paper ballots were being counted to show me the operation, and Mr. Switzer followed, and asked me some more questions about it.

All of this has been made clear already; you're just being lazy and ignorant (again).

Being one of those who thinks hydrogen is a shuck -- an energy storage medium instead of an energy source -- my initial thought was about how much more energy is consumed as overhead creating, charging and transporting the extra weight of this "refined" storage medium.

But, yes. My second thought was noting that after the hydrogen has been sucked out of the medium, you are left with a tank of hi-tech doped glass -- and the article doesn't get into the excretion side of things.

Presumably, before you next fill up at the station, you have to take a dump. And the medium has to be transported back for recharging or proper disposal. And it better be recharging. How large would the disposal facility become if every tank of "gas" used by the nation created a tank of worthless glass? If it is recharged -- how many times can it be recharged before it becomes a tank of worthless glass?

Just another article that adds weight to my feeling that hydrogen is a con.

The article also comes off as insincere fearmongering about the explosive danger of hydrogen. 35 of 97 people died on the Hindenburg -- mostly from jumping. Compare that with:

"As dozens of scorched corpses awaited collection, grim-faced rescue workers swung others into a mass grave.

Gasoline gushing from a ruptured pipeline exploded Friday as villagers scavenged for fuel, setting off an inferno that killed up to 200 people in this oil-rich country of mostly poor people. It appeared some victims tried to flee the unfolding disaster only to be overtaken by flames spreading across the fuel slick.

More than 1,000 people in Nigeria, Africa's oil giant, have died in recent years when fuel they were pilfering from pipelines caught fire - and officials said it would likely happen again."

http://www.heraldnet.com/stories/06/05/13/100wir_a 3pipeline001.cfm

Grocery stores can, and DO, track individual purchases. Recently, a fire fighter was suspected in an arson because his card had shown as purchasing the accelerant used in the fire. It wasn't until someone else confessed that he was cleared. The DEA has subpoenaed records looking for people purchasing large numbers of baggies. A large grocery store, in the aftermath of 9/11, turned over to the FBI their entire loyalty database of purchases and purchasers, without so much as a subpoena, to "help find and fight terrorists."

Even if there is doubt about how such people should be classified (as POW or to be set free), article 5 insists that they "shall enjoy the protection of the present convention until such time as their status has been determined by a competent tribunal"

I think what motivates people's unease is a gut sense of the numbers - since Dick Cheney gutted the military, we don't have the numbers required for an indefinite occupation of two countries. We're only where we are now thanks to an unprecedented callup of the National Guard and Reserves - if we need more troops, where are they going to come from?

I'll grant you that by itself, re-appointing people to draft boards is no big deal. However, it is the height of foolishness to take this administration's word that everything is rosy - particularly given their track record with WMD and the economy. We're in a situation now where the US is delaying ground action in Fallujah until after the US election, for domestic political reasons.

Are you familiar with a "special skills draft"? I think it's even shown up on Slashdot. Take a look at the slightly contorted statements Bush is making - he's not ruling out a special skills draft, or even mandatory national service (military service optional).

Did you know that the chairman of the RNC threatened legal action against Rock the Vote for trying to use a threat of a draft to motivate college students? Do you feel comfortable with political parties deciding what is or isn't acceptible speech?

Of course, the mainstream media wasn't bothered by the chairman of a party that controls all branches of government threatening legal action for stating an Unfact. I think that proves my point, which was that you can't be educated paying attention to the mainstream media.

We can use President Bush's terrorist definition:
1) Is brown
2) Mistakenly refers to God as Allah
3) Hates freedom

Your statements are false. One of the first terrorists to be convicted was white American Muslim, and another one won't be far behind. President Bush has also visited Mosques and condemned violence against Arab Americans since the start of this War. It is likely that most Muslim extremists that are captured or killed will not be white for the simple fact that most Muslims are of Arab, African, or Asian decent. That doesn't make defending ourselves against their attacks racist. That would be nonsense, as is your statement.

As to the so-called "Army of God," why would he mention them? Eric Rudolph and Clayton Waagner, who were behind hundreds of incidents (mainly fake anthrax letters in addition to the bombings) attributed to the "The Army of God," have been captured by law enforcement. They aren't a significant on-going problem that could result in thousands or tens of thousand killed like Al Qaeda is trying to do.

You are either being reckless with the facts or deliberately smearing the President. Either way it is unbecoming.

Child's Play

Mon, November 24 2003 - 11:50 PM
by: Gabe

If you are like me, every time you see an article like this one, where the author claims that video games are training our nations youth to kill you get angry. The media seems intent on perpetuating the myth that gamers are ticking time bombs just waiting to go off. I know for a fact that gamers are good people. I have had the opportunity on multiple occasions to meet hundreds of you at conventions all over the country. We are just regular people who happen to love video games.

With that in mind we have put together a little something we like to call "Child's Play". Penny Arcade is working with the Seattle Children's Hospital and Amazon.com to make this Christmas really special for a lot of very sick kids. With the help of the Children's Hospital we have created an Amazon Wish List for the kids. It's full of video games, movies and toys. Some of these kids are in pretty bad shape and just having a Game Boy would really raise their spirits.

Please take some time to browse the Wish List. Maybe all you can afford is a package of batteries or maybe you want to go in with your entire office and get the kids a GameCube. Every single contribution will help out the Children's Hospital and the 190,000 kids they treat each year.

All the toys and games will be delivered to us and we will in turn deliver them to the Children's Hospital. As soon as the toys start arriving I'll set up a web site and post as many pictures as I can. We will be making a trip over to one of the hospitals next week and we'll bring you back stories from some of the kids along with more pictures.

Penny Arcade has a readership of something like 150,000 gamers across the world. We are arguably the largest community of gamers on the internet. The important word there being community. This isn't IGN, this isn't Gamespy, we are not a faceless corporation, you are not just a number tracked by a database and then relayed to hungry advertisers. You guys have proven yourselves to be a powerful force when stirred into action. Here is your opportunity to use that power to do some real good.

Let's give these kids the Christmas that they deserve and let's give the news papers a different kind of story to write about gamers.

-Gabe out

from the Bill France article:
The broken record would be about violence, and it would seem that the warnings have all been issued.
But, try these three points for starters:
- If a parent wanted their children to develop attitudes like Gary Ridgway, the confessed killer of at least 48 women, these games might provide a good training ground.

Okay, so the Green River killings started in July 1982, according to cnn. Instead of offering reasons as to how Gary Ridgway developed his mindset and the various warning signs related to a confessed serial killer, Bill France decides to warp this into a video game issue. Therefore, let's see what games may have inspired the rampage. Perhaps he was re-enacting a twisted version of his experience in Lasso? Or Naughty Boy?

If you need to speculate, look at the guy's history and work from there. The quickest article I could find is here. Interesting that the article states:

... by the time Ridgway and his second wife divorced in 1981, but coworkers remember Ridgway carried a Bible,...

You see that! And this was JUST BEFORE THE KILLINGS! Now go and speculate!

We could just set a bunch of minks loose.

1) China
2) North Korea
3) Iraq
4) Iran
5) The United States of America