Archives August 2007

More EULA Stupidity

Weather Underground has a Dashboard Widget for MacOS (basically, a little desktop display that shows the weather and five-day forecast). The EULA contains a standard no-reverse-engineering clause:

You may not alter, merge, modify, adapt or translate the Software, or decompile, reverse engineer, disassemble, or otherwise reduce the Software to a human-perceivable form.

The problem is that dashboard widgets just use HTML, JavaScript, and CSS. They’re just mini-web page.

Or, to put it in non-techie terms: hey, jackasses! The thing that I’m not allowed to translate into human-readable form is already in human-readable form. Dumbasses.

Republican Dogma: “No Taxes”

The GOP is well known as the party of lowering taxes. Case in point, from a WaPo article about the recent bridge collapse in Minnesota:

Gov. Tim Pawlenty also said he was willing to reverse his long-standing opposition to a state gas tax increase to pay for infrastructure improvements in the state.

President Bush on Thursday dismissed raising the federal gasoline tax to repair the nation’s bridges, though _ as proposed Wednesday by House Transportation Committee Chairman Jim Oberstar, D-Minn. _ at least until Congress changes the way it spends highway money.

I can see the wisdom in lowering taxes sometimes, when they’re prove more of a hindrance than a help. And besides, no one likes paying taxes, so it’s an obvious vote-winner. But the Republicans seem to have raised “lower taxes!” from a slogan to a religious tenet.

Case in point, again from the WaPo, same day as above:

President Bush said yesterday that he is considering a fresh plan to cut tax rates for U.S. corporations to make them more competitive around the world, an initiative that could further inflame a battle with the Democratic Congress over spending and taxes and help define the remainder of his tenure.

Nice going, Dubya! We may be seeing the country’s infrastructure literally crumbling before our eyes, and you want to lower taxes some more.

(HT for pointing me at this.)

Some rather obvious observations about taxes after the jump.

Read More

I Think I’m Fisked in Japanese, I Really Think So

I ran across this article about my FABNAQ about Intelligent Design. Unfortunately, it’s in Japanese, which I don’t speak, and the Babelfish and Google translations are bad enough that I can’t even tell whether I’m being fisked or praised.

Are there any nipponophones in the audience who can take a look and give me a sense of what’s going on?

Criminally Incompetent Teachers

Over at Kent Hovind’s Whinery, I ran across this comment:

I am a high school science teacher. So far I have been able to teach creation science a couple years without being stopped by administration. I spend as much time if not more teaching creation science as I do going thru the textbook they make me use. Of course, I skip all the chapters with evolution. I use Dr. Hovind’s seminar notebook and his book Are You Being Brainwashed. In a couple weeks I will be going at it again. I pray I can continue to do the same as I have been.

Hopefully, this guy is just lying, and has made the whole thing up. Because if not, that means he’s not just failing to teach the kids science, he’s teaching them antiscience, filling their heads with nonsense that has to be unlearned before they can be properly taught. He’s skipping important parts of the curriculum. He’s bringing in “teaching” materials by a wackjob so far out there that even other young-earth creationists have asked him to stop. And if this has really been going on for years, we have to consider the possibility that the school administration knows about his activities, but is turning a blind eye to them.

How would one go about subpoenaing cseblogs.com’s httpd logs to see where this clown posted from, to see whether any of it is true?

Arming the Enemy

From the Washington Post:

The Pentagon has lost track of about 190,000 AK-47 assault rifles and pistols given to Iraqi security forces in 2004 and 2005, according to a new government report, raising fears that some of those weapons have fallen into the hands of insurgents fighting U.S. forces in Iraq.

The author of the report from the Government Accountability Office says U.S. military officials do not know what happened to 30 percent of the weapons the United States distributed to Iraqi forces from 2004 through early this year as part of an effort to train and equip the troops. The highest previous estimate of unaccounted-for weapons was 14,000, in a report issued last year by the inspector general for Iraq reconstruction.

Can this administration do anything without it turning to shit?

And I don’t want to hear another word about “criticizing the war emboldens the enemy” or any crap like that. Not while the government’s own incompetence is inadvertently supplying weapons—actual steel weapons, not metaphorical ones—to the people shooting at our troops.

Math for Middle-School Girls

HT to for pointing me at Math Doesn’t Suck, by Danica McKellar. It’s a math book aimed at middle- and high school girls. The main message seem to be a) math doesn’t suck, and isn’t as hard as you think it is, and b) if you’re smart, don’t hide it. Both worthwhile messages.

I haven’t read the book, so I don’t know whether it lives up to its hype, but if it leads to more women realizing that they can do math, then that’s all good.

Oh, and may I just point out, as a guy, that smart is teh sexy?

Fifty Bucks, Same As In the Vestry

Religious scandals are always fun, whether it’s Jim Bakker, Ted Haggard, or Tommy Tester.

According to the Kingsport, TN Times-News, police in Johnson City, TN, accosted Tester to investigate reports of indecent exposure. Tester, a Baptist minister, radio host, and all-around upstanding citizen, was obviously rattled by this:

“He said they (Johnson City police) scared him–he was scared to death and didn’t know what he’d said or what he’d admitted or anything else,” Morris said.

So rattled was he that he offered the cops blow jobs.

He then got out of his car, lifted his skirt, and peed on a car wash in front of some kids.

The cops also found an open bottle of vodka in his car.

According to reports, Tester also allegedly admitted to police that he had been drinking and failed all field sobriety tests.

He’s been charged with indecent exposure, DUI, and having an open container of alcohol.

Update, 16:13: Well, that didn’t take long. familmusicgroup.com has a gallery of photos of the site owner with various radio people at a convention last year. According to Google’s cache, as of July 15, that page included a photo of Tommy Tester. Not anymore.

God in the Texas Pledge

Did you know that Texas has a pledge, much like the pledge of allegiance? I didn’t, until I ran across this article in the Houston Chronicle saying that the Texas legislature has added to it the words “one state under God”.

Why? Debbie Riddle (R-Gilead) says:

“Personally, I felt like the Texas pledge had a big old hole in it, and it occurred to me, ‘You know what? We need to fix that,’ “

Perhaps the good citizens of Texas would have been better served if their state legislators had looked to Iraq and taken the month off.

I don’t see how this can possibly pass constitutional muster. According to the article, saying the Texas pledge has been mandatory since 2003. If there’s a more clear-cut case of violation of separation of church and state, I haven’t seen one yet. Then again, if and when someone sues (the article quotes Barry Lynn of Americans United for Separation of Church and State), they’ll be able to whip people up into a frenzy over those damlibruls who “want to take God out of our schools”.

What would Jesus think of this sort of all-god, all the time mentality?

Matthew 6: 5“And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by men. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full. 6But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.

But I don’t suppose one can expect True Christians to listen to some 2000-year-old long-haired hippie Jew.