Rip Van Winkle of blogging arises from slumber {Yawn!}

Ever since I moved to Dallas and changed hosting companies, somehow the vanity page got neglected. But now with old domains expiring and new adventures in my life, it's time to get the main domain fluffed with content.

Enough with the endless domains of zero content! I now have only three domains, and will add a fourth only once I get the Glittery One back her domain. Really!  ¶ 4:24 PM

  It's Not Just About High Crimes

From the Declaration of Independence

A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act
which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

tyrant

An absolute ruler who governs without restrictions.

Signs of tyranny:

• Disregarding the checks and balances of the constitutional republic


• Disregardign the laws of nature, by not supporting the most fundamental accords of environmental cooperation


• Disregarding international law, even when voluntary, valid treaties bind us to such law


• Disregarding the sovereignty of a nation state, by invading a country without just provocation


• Disregarding the laws of war, by putting captured enemy members into legal limbo, thereby justifying their mistreatment


• Disregarding our own Federal law, even to the point of sidestepping a secret court to spy on our own people


• Disregarding State law, by applying Federal law in a manner outside its jurisdiction


• Disregarding the inalienable Rights of the People, by chipping away at the protections of the Bill of Rights


• Disregarding the needs of our own people, such as providing full logistical support to Iraqi aggression while denying Louisiana citizens fundamental disaster relief

A person with any sort of character and honor, when found to be unfit for their position of public office, tenders their resignation. One who swears to uphold and defend the Constitution against all foreign and domestic enemies, and then undermines that same Constitution, is at best an oathbreaker and at worst a traitor. Will our presiding tyrant(s) do the honorable thing?

  ¶ 9:31 PM

 

My employer is moving to Dallas, is it time to hire a bodyguard?

Why do executives make decisions for themselves that make no sense from a quality of life standpoint for the rest of us? Sorry, don't answer that. On May 10, 2005, Fluor corporation reported that they would be moving their corporate headquarters to the Dallas/Fort Worth area in early 2006.

Doing a little due diligence for myself, I wanted to know what it might be like living in a real city center. I wasn't particularly looking for crime statistics, but they kept getting shoved in my path the more I Googled. Here are the real telling numbers.

Santa Ana is by no means considered safe in Orange County, rather it has more of a ghetto reputation. But by statistics standards it's a little higher than the national average. Irvine is a benchmark for safety, and has a crime index of only 30. So Irvine is three times safer than Santa Ana, but Dallas is three times more dangerous than Santa Ana. Yikes! And this is not just a one year aberration. Dallas also has had the highest crime rate of the nation's largest cities for seven years running, according to federal crime statistics. If you ask for a more or less independant opinion, Booz Allen Hamilton (no relation) was commissioned to study the case. The consulting firm more or less reported that Dallas was a civic basket case, the details of which can be read here.

Um, so what does that mean for those contemplating the move? Many will choose not to make the move at all, and unfortunately some will be going into this move blindly. After being culturally deprived for the last decade and a half, I've been looking into the Deep Ellum district of the downtown area. It is accessable by public transportation, an absolute necessity, and has a nice reputation for arts, food, music, and indy film. Still, it might be worthwhile to find a suitable martial arts dojo and resume training. If I can't afford my own bodyguard, perhaps I could get up to speed and moonlight as one. {sigh}

Standard disclaimer applies: I only work for Fluor, I don't speak for them in any official capacity. They couldn't pay me enough for that job.  ¶ 2:27 PM

 

Earth Day; not quite taking a pass on it

Starting with collecting pop bottles at two cents each, continuing through the Whole Earth Catalog, and volunteering at a uni recycling center, environmentalism has been an integral part of my life. Two and a half years ago I gave up eating meat, partly as a response to the philosophies espoused in Diet for a Small Planet. So 2005 looked like a good year for doing something more positive on the Internet to support Mother Nature.

Well, something comes to mind about good intentions and roads. Nevertheless, I did get a shopping site started, called the Sustainable Marketplace. It's not just going to have affiliate marketing links, either, if there is a product I truly care about. One such item is the 9 volt battery light. I got one of these gems a couple of months ago, and it goes with me everywhere. It shall be the last small flashlight I ever buy!

So today will be spent being mindfull of the (un)intended consequences of my actions on the environment. Tomorrow will be spent adding more content to the Marketplace.  ¶ 3:24 PM

 

Wooden legs are allowed but lighters are straight out

The TSA (United States) publishes a list of prohibited and allowed items for carryon and checked baggage in PDF format.

You can carry on a wooden leg, as long as it is your wooden leg. Meat cleavers must be in checked baggage, but they are specifically allowed. If you're a smoker or otherwise Zippo owner, bad news. You can't take a lighter on board even in checked baggage, but you are allowed safety matches. Martial artists are in luck, nearly all your paraphernalia is allowed as checked baggage, although ninjas will have to leave their flash powder back at the dojo.

But please, don't remind the TSA folks that even a sharpened pencil in the hand of a trained professional is a deadly weapon. They're paranoid enough as it is!  ¶ 12:58 PM

 

Not Double Jeopardy, But Nil Jeopardy

Overshadowed by the titillating news of Michael Jackson allegedly being indicted on molestation charges, and Scott Peterson finally get his day in court over his murdered wife and child, several hundred detainees still wait in jail to be heard in court at all. Messrs. Jackson and Peterson will be tried by the facts and the laws, for as American citizens they are subject to her laws, but the so called 'enemy combatants' pass years of their life in detention awaiting some form of jurisdiction and justice.

The government's executive branch had coined this term in order to put the detainees in legal limbo; they are neither resident alien nor prisoner of war. Further they are detained not on Federal soil, but in a military base nominally held in sovereign trust by Cuban government (such sovereignty by now should have been surely waived), and for some odd reason not clearly treated equivalent to a Federal arsenal. By being neither fish nor fowl, either in subject matter or in person, the defendents find themselves with jailors but without representation before a competent court. In any less ambiguous situation a detainee would enjoy international protection, if not national and state protection by the prevailing laws of the land.

The administration has coined their term of art, and have placed their detainees beyond the reach of the judiciary, but have not acted within the law. The declaration of war, even when legally passed by a majority vote of Congress, does not confer special powers outside the U.S. Constitution and international treaty. As Commander-In-Chief of the Armed Forces, "when called into the actual Service of the United States" as is required by the Constitution, the President has no more nor no less power then what is conferred on him by Congress to execute the proper prosecution of a declared war. Conduct within the framework of war is governed by the Geneva Convention for which the United States is a signatory. But the weakness of the administration's position, and their de facto lawlessness, rests on the fact that as an idiom the term "enemy combatant" has no entry in any recognized legal dictionary! "Enemy" and "combatant" are separately defined, but until the detention in Guantanamo there appeared to be no legal need for such a classification.

The case is being argued in the oral briefs before the Supreme Court as to whether the detainees do or do not have cause of action, are or are not subject to Federal jurisdiction, should or should not have appeal to habeus corpus either through statute pre-dating the Bill of Rights or through the Bill of Rights itself. What the court is not specifically addressing is what does "enemy combatant" mean in a legal sense. If the detainees are not prisoners of war (a term carefully avoided by the administration), and have not broken any American criminal laws, why don't they simply walk free, or at the least seek political asylum from Cuba? Unless and until the detainees are recognized as captured partisans of a nation state against which the United States has declared war, their status should be that of militiamen defending themselves against an invading force.

The case before the court should not be argued as a matter of law, but as a matter of definition. If Congress had had specially provided to the President legislation specifically defining "enemy combatant" as a necessary term of art, and had provisioned for the special treatment of such detainees, and furthermore the Geneva Convention did not have supreme jurisdiction over such matters, only then could these individuals be held against their will. Such special law would have to stand the test of Constitutional scrutiny as well as international legal oversight. Under such appeal the detainees would have cause of action, would have jurisdiction in some (if not more than one) competent court, and would have the right to habeus corpus. As it stands now, through a linguistic fiction they have so far been denied their freedom. It remains to be seen if the Supreme Court can wake up and realize the necessary substance of the debate.

To follow the oral arguments presented to date, one need only find the transcript and recorded audio here.  ¶ 12:17 AM

 

The Free Newsfeed Is Dead, Long Live The (new) Free Newsfeed!

As I suspected RSS 2.0 was a David Winer/Userland thing, not just in terms of commercial tools (Manila, see my earlier The Quest for the Vanishing Newsfeed), but also in terms of the standard itself. Originally called Echo, which had an unfortunate duplication with another project, Atom is a new work-in-progress standard conceived to oversome the deficiencies of RSS. Atom was not on my radar until Blogger started offering it as a publishing option. So I had given up looking for syndicated news when Atom just fell in my lap. David is firmly clenched to RSS as he explains in his position on Atom (Echo)

Well, being a standards wonk myself, I can appreciate the motivation behind crafting Atom. Proponents wanted a specification that could describe feeds and weblog/news entries. Atom is an organic spec, meaning rather than a lot of Big Design Up Front, the proponents are specifying just enough to get it started and useful, but with no less discipline than necessary to make it clear and unambiguous.

Tools like Blogger are providing the generation tool in the publishing process, and newsfeed browsers like BottomFeeder interpret Atom enabled sites. Some very nice tools like Awasu already give limited support through some XML voodoo. Bloggers can now publish their gems via Atom (or RSS), and in so doing become a new micro-provider of syndicated content. Cottage sites are springing up to thread these pearls of wisdom into larger content chains, and likewise republish them via RSS/Atom.

If you want to see my diminuitive examples of self-publishing in action, check out:

XML Glittery One's Diary, and

XML Illustrated Lady's Diary  ¶ 12:49 AM

 

Life Takes A Sudden Turn For The Unusual

Sometimes it pays to pay attention to your surroundings, especially in coffee shops. More than a year ago I was saying, "Hi, how are you doing?" to a lady whose face is completely covered with tattoos. I didn't pay much attention to her, as coffee shops are the sort of place that accumulates all sorts of body art aficionados. Besides, I like to respect peoples space, and not pester them with questions.

But behind every unusual piercing or tatt there is a human being, and sometimes a human interest story. This last month I got to know this illustrated lady, Julia Gnuse. Her story needs to be told, and as she had almost no presence on the Web, I got her to agree to making a web site. With all due respects to Ray Bradbury, and given that Julia is not just a woman but a lady, I gave her the nickname "Illustrated Lady".

Update: 1/1/2007. I am no longer in contact with Julia Gnuse, and really don't have any way of doing so. She lived in Orange County, California, while I moved to Dallas, Texas. I wish her well!  ¶ 5:27 PM

 

The Quest for the Vanishing Newsfeed

Trying this new link, hope it works:

HelpBlog Newsfeed

....

Well, obviously that didn't work, because I have never heard of an RSS newsfeed. This is a 2.0 one...thingy...er, useful tool. Will get back to you when I figure it out...

Ah, never mind. Dave Winer wants my money (for Manila), and he can't have it. I'll see if there are any free newsfeeds left.
  ¶ 9:31 PM

 

Maybe Just Good Enough For Blackmail Shots

When Wired magazine mentioned in it's Wired-Tired-Expired section "keychain camera", I did a double take (the Tired and Expired were keychain MP3 player and keychain memory). My history with photography, digital or otherwise, has been at best sporadic. But in the last five years I put more than 1,500 pictures on a Kodak DC210 digital camera, so in doing so developed a healthy respect for what the technology could do. The DC210 is "only" a 1.2 megapixel camera, barely in the running by todays standards. Nowadays with inexpensive consumer cameras running in the 3-4 megapixels, I should have been thinking about upgrading. But the old battleaxe still takes pictures just as well as it did in 1998, and I have a reputation to maintain of using mostly refurb and obsolete equipment.

In researching what was really out there, I found the prospects grim. ComputerGeeks is selling a fragile looking model with bad documentation and no software. If I'm going to shed sangre from bleeding edge technology, I want it to be from something other than a broken case. So after searching around a bit more in desparation, I found the current model of the Cool-iCam keychain camera. Only one online store seems to be selling it, an outfit called Safety and Security Center. Their shopping cart implementation didn't look too scary, and almost USD100 and a few days later I had my toy.

It is to be expected that the lens would be miniscule and the CCD used to capture the colors would be inferior, but somehow I expected just a little more. The camera body's plastic does look very sturdy, and most of the key components are either recessed or covered. I can get 20 shots on high quality, and the 80 shots on low just aren't worth it. It is supposed to do 16 seconds of video or double as a webcam, the latter I look forward to trying out when I do some "video conferencing" from the local free Wi-Fi hotspot. At least it includes conferencing software NetMeeting and CUSeeMe, quite possibly worth as much as the camera itself.

As to using it artistically, I'm afraid unedited the photos won't stand up by themselves for those "Kodak moments". The DC210 will still hang around in my pack awhile until another distraction occupies my time. But with the Kodak I had fun applying Photoshop effects like "oil" and "watercolor" to the final output, so likely I'll do the same with the Cool-iCam pics. That or keep it handy for those Rodney King moments. ;^)  ¶ 8:22 PM