Monthly Archives: December 2006

95 percent of Americans had premarital sex??

Posted by on December 22, 2006 1 comment

Now this is both scary and sad! The study indicates that 95 percent of American’s have had premarital sex.

Now if this is actually true (I’ll explain my skepticism later), it should be a huge wake-up call to the nation. No wonder there is such a high rate of children born outside of marriage. If we correlate that with the studies that indicate all the problems dealing with children of unwed mothers, where the father is no longer in the home, we see what a huge negative affect this has on our culture.
If we look at our “heroes” and celebrities (TomKat, etc), we see not only premarital sex, but the extreme problem of children born out of wedlock. What great examples they are. This is one of the paramount evils destroying families and individuals (children), and in turn, our society.

Read more »

The internatianal value of the US military

Posted by on December 21, 2006 7 comments

In a recent article by Orson Scott Card (I know… I’m obsessed), he talks about how our civilization can fall. Not just the United States, but the international economy and in turn, society as we know it. He makes some interesting points concerning the value of the US military.
Read more »

Honoring Those Who Died – Orson Scott Card

Posted by on December 20, 2006 1 comment

Brother Orson continues to pump out some good article. In this one, he proposes something I could really get behind:

Here is what I propose. Forget the constitutional amendment about flags. Let’s demand that Congress pass a law banning any kind of political demonstration within the sight or hearing of people in attendance at the funerals, viewings, or burials of men and women who died in uniform, and forbidding demonstrating at or defacing their grave.

Patriotic display would be exempted, of course — because the rituals of leavetaking should include the right of family and friends to speak in favor of what the soldier sacrificed for.

Anyone who breaks this law by holding up signs or shouting slogans or throwing things at such a funeral would receive a felony conviction, including the loss of their right to vote, and a mandatory sentence of exactly one year.

I would support such a law 100%

E-petitions warning (from snopes.com)

Posted by on December 20, 2006 No comments

So today, I got the following email from a relative:

Pass this one on to all your e-mail buddies and take the time to read the Snopes.com article listed at the bottom of the message. It is full of good advice especially about the “cookies.”To whom it may concern:Just a word to the wise. E-mail petitions are* NOT* acceptable to Congress
or any other municipality. To be acceptable petitions must have a *signed*signature and full address.Almost all e-mails that ask you to add your name and forward on to others are similar to that mass letter years ago that asked people to send business cards to the little kid in Florida who wanted to break the Guinness Book of Records for the most cards. All it was, and *all this type of e-mail is, to get names and “cookie” tracking info for tele-marketers and spammers to validate active e-mail accounts for their own purposes.*

*Any time you see an e-mail that says forward this on to “10″ of your friends, sign this petition, or you’ll get good luck, or whatever, it has either an e-mail tracker program attached that tracks the cookies and e-mails of those folks you forward to, or the host sender is getting a copy each time it gets forwarded and then is able to get lists of “active” e-mails to use in spam e-mails, or sell to others that do.

*Please forward this notice to others and you will be providing a good service to your friends, and will be rewarded by not getting 30,000 spam e-mails in the future.*

(If you have been sending out the above kinds of email, now you know why you
get so much spam!)

Check it out: http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/petition/internet.htm

So STOP sending them to me.

And here is my response:

Read more »

Obesity warnings on clothes

Posted by on December 19, 2006 No comments

Come on! This has got to be a joke!

In this article, some British scientists are trying to get obesity warning labels on clothing designed for overweight people. Now, I can’t make excuses for those who are overweight (which would include me if you go by the Body Mass Index — I’m supposedly obese). I know there are plenty of people who should and could lose weight.  I’m not a believer in excuses.  If it needs to be done, then do it.  That’s easy for me to say.

But come on! They don’t need to hear how overweight they are when trying to buy new clothes (that probably don’t fit quite right anyway).

For overweight people, that is probably one of the most difficult things for them to do… shopping for clothes. The only thing more excruciating would be getting in a swimming suit. They already know they are overweight, don’t force an additional reminder on them. The fact they are buying (or putting on) plus size clothes is a reminder in itself. Let’s not demean them any more than they (most likely) already demean themselves.

The ultimate hybrid gadget

Posted by on December 19, 2006 No comments

Samsung recently announced the future launch of a pretty amazing product, the Samsung SPH-P9000.  Sporting itself as a PDA, laptop, cell phone and media center all in one gadget, it looks like it’s getting pretty close to the ultimate hybrid.

This thing is about the size of a large PDA (think Apple Newton size — 5.26 x 3.7 x 1.14 inches) when it’s all folded in, but it unfolds to reveal a 5″ screen and a full size QWERTY keyboard.  It runs Windows XP and so includes all it’s multimedia capabilities.  It also comes with WiMAX and EV-DO for wireless broadband connectivity and a myriad of other technologies.

Read more »

From SuSE Linux to Ubuntu

Posted by on December 18, 2006 No comments

One of my coworkers is a huge Ubuntu fan. He tried SuSE for a while, but eventually went back to Ubuntu. He had a lot of success with some of the problems I was having with SuSE. Specifically, it was Evolution connecting to Exchange (as I have previously discussed).

So I decided to try it out at home. I had an old machine that I had re-built with some upgrades and just hadn’t gotten everything put together properly. So I decided that it was going to be my Ubuntu test machine because I really didn’t need it to fully function.

Read more »

Greylisting — one more tool in the arsenal against SPAM

Posted by on December 17, 2006 No comments

I ran across the following link the other day and was very interested.
Postfix and Postgrey: A proactive approach to spam filtering

For those not familiar with Postfix, it’s an MTA (Mail Transfer Agent). Basically, a mail server. It’s the server application that stores, accepts and sends emails to different mail servers. So Postfix is usually our first line of defense against SPAM. A few postfix plugins already help with spam but still many get through because spammers consistently change their techniques.

Read more »

I'm coming out of the closet… I'm slightly left

Posted by on December 16, 2006 4 comments

Following the example of my buddy Ryan Byrd, I took the Political Compass Questionnaire and lo and behold, I’m slightly left:

Economic Left/Right: -1.00

Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: 0.87

So I’m in the Authoritarian Left quadrant. But really very slightly. Although I always knew I was pretty central, I always thought I was slightly right. I’ve almost always voted Republican. I’m a solid supporter of President Bush and the War on Terrorism. I’ve always aligned myself morally with the right and for me, that is a major part of my political affiliation.

Go ahead… let’s see where you stand. Take the test.

How true it is

Posted by on December 9, 2006 5 comments

I ran into this quote today, by H.L. Mencken:

“Under democracy one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule – and both commonly succeed, and are right.”

I’m sure this was originally spoken/written in jest, but it is completely true. Where’s the centrist party that every keeps talking about?