From cnn….

“I think in this case the situation was made much more difficult on the part of the Cambridge Police Department,” Powell said. “Once they felt they had to bring Dr. Gates out of the house and to handcuff him, I would’ve thought at that point, some adult supervision would have stepped in and said ‘OK look, it is his house. Let’s not take this any further, take the handcuffs off, good night Dr. Gates.’

The police were completely, utterly in the wrong by my book. But hey, I still like the above quote.

My largest bird just called me a wuss.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/25/nyregion/25bear.html?_r=1

Boy, he is full blown no holds barred into EVERYTHING today.

One second in my lap insisting on head scritches, next he is tipping over the garbage. Then attacking the ceiling fan blades (which he can reach from the top of his cage).

Kiwi is trying to stay glued to me – except when Harley runs her off. Kermit is being pretty good. She hasn’t attacked Harley, yet. And is happily playing on the playstand.

So Police want an apology from the President of the United States, who said that they acted stupidly for arresting a man who had shown he was in his own home? His crime? Yelling at the police. Which isn’t illegal, by the way.

Does anyone think that cops are NOT out of control?

I love this type of stuff.

They’ve worked out an equation to explain even spacing in valleys! That neat stuff.

Math is fascinating stuff. Its a shame that my mind breaks when I attempt anything much beyond 2+2.

From here

WASHINGTON – In a rare win for gun control advocates, the Senate on Wednesday rejected a measure allowing a person with a concealed weapon permit in one state to also hide his firearm when visiting another state.
The vote was 58-39 in favor of the provision establishing concealed carry permit reciprocity in the 48 states that have concealed weapons laws. That fell two votes short of the 60 needed to approve the measure, offered as an amendment to a defense spending bill.
Opponents prevailed in their argument that the measure violated states rights by forcing states with stringent requirements for permits to recognize concealed weapons carriers from states that give out permits to almost any gun owner.

Bolded by me.

It failed, and is should have failed. While a very strong supporter of gun/weapon rights (I believe that anyone should be able to have just about any weapon), I am a stronger believer in State Rights.

Yes, the constitutions second amendment grants an individual right to keep weapons – but is that amendment incorporated against the states (as most of the other amendments have been) or does it only apply to the federal government? Plus, even if it applies to all states (as I believe) it is still up to the individual states to decide how they want to apply it.

I had been debating scraping up the money to pick one of these up for some time. Not anymore, after this whole “delete two books” thing that just happened. If I buy a book, I own the book. Period.

As much as I love books, there are several things wrong with the ebook readers so far

a) too expensive.
b) the books are still too pricey. Electronic books should be *much* cheaper than physical books
c) No tethering, whether wired or wireless. If you buy it, you own it, the thing never “phones home”.
d) Need really, really strong pdf support. I’ve purchased into the triple digits of pdf rpg game books. A smaller, easier to use reader than my laptop? SOLD! So far, it hasn’t happened.
e) Strong annotation capabilities. I’ve only played with the Sony ebook readers a bit – not impressed with them, in this regard.
f) color display – optional too. Can switch it off and on. That way you can easily view comic books on the things.
g) Has a computer based integration “store” in effect. If the device has wireless of any sort, I want to be able to turn it totally off. I want to purchase and download the books to my laptop, and then transfer them.
h) Backup to a usb stick. Insert it in the reader, hit 1 or 2 keys, and boom, it backs up your stuff to the key. With encryption and tight compression as options.

Anyone who has looked at the original documents from when the Lake was built isn’t going to be surprised by this decision. I’ve wondered for several years what the hell Georgia officials have been thinking, when it comes to water. Link

U.S. District Court Judge Paul Magnuson said Lanier wasn’t built for water supply and the state’s withdrawals are illegal. He acknowledged it would be impossible to immediately stop using the lake because it is metro Atlanta’s main water supply. But he said if the state can’t get permission from Congress within three years, the withdrawals must end.

“The Court recognizes that this is a draconian result,” Magnuson wrote. “It is, however, the only result that recognizes how far the operation of the (lake) has strayed from the original authorization.”

So now its kicked up to Congress, which is where it should have started.

Update: Read the 97 page ruling here.

Additional note: Resolving this in Congress is going to be BRUTAL – a republican state (a powerful republican state) needing a major, major favor from a Democratic congress. And its something our politicians should have resolved decades ago.

Edit again: There are going to be a lot of “opinions” floating around on this one – and you can bet that virtually no one will have read the decision. “What? Read 97 pages? Why would I do that? Thats like, work!” I despair, sometimes.

While overall, this is not a very good blog post, it does contain a great bit of wisdom.

….those topics include a lot of “under the hood” improvements that can really cause problems if you don’t know what you’re doing.

Here’s a hint: start reading RFC’s and/or white papers on the technologies that are implemented. Too many people just study check boxes and radio buttons. Don’t just study how to configure, study the consequences of the configuration.

While its a hell of a lot harder to do, knowing the why’s of the configuration is more important than the how. You can always figure out the how, the why is a bit more difficult.

In light of the “controversy” over possible attempts by the CIA to kill Al Queda leaders, and etc….

I sincerely HOPE that they were trying, and succeeded in a few – or more than a few.

As critical as I am of the CIA, that is their primary function – or better be. Killing foreign enemies of the United States is a good thing.

is located here.

I’ve not yet had a chance to read it (on page 3), but its only 41 pages long.

I have in the past found that most people are not interested in reading anything of substance, instead preferring to form knee jerk opinions based on three paragraph news articles. Or, agreeing with whatever their clique tells them to think. Its one of the major failings of humanity in general.
One of the more irritating manifestations of this, are the ones who dismiss something without even looking at it, based on who its from “Oh, well you know what HE will say about it”. (I’m looking at my Dad and Granola here, though not exclusively). Even reading materials you suspect to be strongly biased will give you important information….. Alright, I’ll climb off my soapbox here.