- Zeldman is redesigning. I like it so far.
- At thirty degrees, it feels warm in Boston today.
- Zipcar is running a new ad in the T cars. It goes something like this: "320 hours a year having sex. 450 hours a year looking for a parking space. What's wrong with this picture?"
- Dave never posted part three of his honeymoon story. He's a bastard.
- Is it possible to recognize a blog from a regular web page using some type of Bayesian filter that has a database of blog pages and a database of non-blog pages?
January 2003 Archives
Man, I have nothing to say tonight... Nothing at all. I'm going to drink a beer and chill out. You should to. If you're into that kind of thing.
Made some changes to the templates, fixing the about page finally and adding perma-links to the comments for direct comment linking. Let me know if you find any problems.
Oh, and while I'm talking about things I watched last night, I made sure to watch the State of the Union. Once again, I was reminded that Bush is not exactly the most charismatic speaker, but string together lots of patriotic words and even I get goose bumps. I'm not convinced that any of his current plans are good ones, nor am I convinced that war with Iraq is a good idea. Not convinced, but definitely on the "kick ass and take names" side of the fence. See, one of the things I was taught growing up is that you may not agree with the war, but you're always supportive of the troops who are involved. Their lives are on the line, their families hearts are heavy, they need support, not dissent and arguing. I'm not sure where protesting fits in to that equation, but wherever it is I haven't decided to look yet. I may not be convinced that war in Iraq is a good thing, but the equation (world - saddam = good thing) seems to be true in my book.
Anyway, I'm interested in hearing what other people though, and even whether or not you watched. If you write about it on your own blog, feel free to trackback me, if not feel free to comment. Also, if you find links other places that are interesting, post them here. I'd be glad to read them. Thanks ahead of time.
So once again, last night, American Idol sucked. It's a little known secret that I didn't watch any of the first episodes last year, becoming addicted only after they had narrowed the field to nine people and were looking for the judge chosen tenth. Now I know why.
Highlights of last night's episode? The kid who called Simon "the caucasian one" and Randy "the brown one". Also, the guy (Andy?) in the green sweater who sang Like a Virgin and I Want to Dance with Sombody. His lively performance involved groping himself and gyrating, leading to a spirited discussion in my house about his sanity and mental health. My aunt assured me he had to be mentally ill and that people like him shoud have been screened out in order to avoid public humiliation. I, on the other hand, felt that although he was weird, he probably didn't qualify as mentally ill. Feel free to leave your opinion in the comments section.
Last night's episode also came off rather tame compared to other shows. Paula's absence was felt during the first half, as without her Simon had no one to bitch at. It also seemed that he and Randy agreed on everything, meaning no spirited arguments about who should and shouldn't move on. This meant that Seacrest came across as even more annoying than usual without anything else to distract my attention. Man he sucks.
I'm looking forward to tonight's show, as hopefully I won't have a headache after it's over caused by off key shrieking for an hour. No matter what, though, it has to be better than last night.
Continue reading "The caucasian one" didn't like it.
Wired: Immortal Code
This is just an interesting article, kind of heart-breaking though in a geeky sort of way. Having written some projects that took me a while, if the code was to just disappear, I'd be unhappy as the jpy of code writing for me isn't the perfect algorithm, but instead the use the code gets. These poor people spent years on their app only to have it sold out from under them on promises that evaporated along with practially everything else built during the dot com boom. Bah. The whole thing is so depressing...
I got a basic spider from the book I've been reading to compile and run against my site. In less than five minutes, it had downloaded 316 pages to my hard drive. I didn't even realize I *had* that many pages. Sheesh. The bot is currently downloading the files individually and storing them. However, with a little tweaking it will store them in a database. I'm pretty excited, because this means a day of running and I'll either a) have a pretty sweet data set to experiment with, or b) have a full harddrive.
I think this is great. EETimes has an article about a new Gibson guitar that will be digital. Instead of using an analog cable to connect to other devices, it will use Cat5. The article mentions that new mixers built on the same technology will be able to store settings for an entire band's gear on CD so they can be loaded instantly. And I say, screw the Cat5, wait until they add wirless. Coming from someone who has unloaded stages for bands like Eve6 and Fuel, the thought of having no wires and devices that find each other in a Rendezvous like network is awesome.
The obvious question is what about the sound? The article says that using this technology, each string on the guitar will be able to be treated individually, using seperate effects and settings. That's a bonus. However, many people think analog sounds are much nicer than digital. There's a group of audiophiles out there who say that transferring analog (vinyl, for example) to digital loses the highest highs and the lowest lows as well as some sound in between. If you've never heard a perfectly clean record with a brand new high quality sharp needle, you won't be able to comprehend this due to the high level of quality CD's give over a wide range of equipment. However, in the right environment, other formats do put digital to shame.
Personally, I think for real musicians, this type of technology may be one more way for them to experiment with new sounds and techniques (a la Miles Davis playing into the floor of the stage because the reflection of the sound was more interesting than what came straight out of the horn). For the layman, though, this will definitely be one more crutch creating another generation of studio bands as cleanup work and synchronization can be applied realtime, making Bobby's garageband sound like a well oiled machince. That, I'm not so sure is a good thing, especially when it could open the way for the talentless hacks on last week's American Idol to make it further than they already did. Oh, the horror!
From Paul and Al on whjy Friday morning:
What's the number one way to tell if your Super Bowl Party's host is gay? He tells you he's going in the kitchen to suck down a few Buds, and he's not talking about beer.
I've been working on writing a php app that will allow me to post to my blog by email. Tonight, I got all of the pieces nailed down. It's just a matter of putting them together.
One thing I learned. When placing an xml-rpc request, the MT docs talk about an appkey. I couldn't figure out what they were referring to until I looked at the blogger api. You need to fill out this form and you'll get a developers key to use with your app. If you were placing calls against blogger, different apps could be tracked. As of now, I don't think MT has a tracking system for xml-rpc requests.
As I get more of this worked out, I'll be posting links to the information I used, and maybe even opening a working system for others to use. We'll see.
Hey Kirk, here's a shoutout. Sorry I haven't written back yet... I'm trying...
Last night's American Idol "was the most-watched night ever for the Fox network". Gross.
I don't understand how you can setup a show where you want people to stick around to listen to skilled singers by having seven million horrible people sing. I mean, most of that wasn't even tolerable, it was just gross. My post last night came out halfway through. Today, after watching the second half, and thinking about it, I'm even more disgusted. They could have at east thrown us a bone and shown one or two people who were incredible to keep us coming back for more. In my opinion, we got nothing.
I'll probably watch next week. And the week after. I don't watch much television, but I feel myself starting to get hooked. I mean, if I didn't watch, what would I talk about for the next seven trillion weeks?
Ok. So I had originally promised myself I wouldn't watch the new American Idol... I said I was sick of reality television. And I am. And the first two episodes of AI have been crap.
All this horrendous noise coming from my television. There were very few glimpses of people who looked like they were worth watching for in the future. So many horrible people, though. There were times I actually found myself saying "please, please, stop them... make them stop..." I'd be reaching for the remote, but not quick enough, as they'd finally stop and my ears would rejoice.
So far the only thing that has impressed me about the new AI is the fact that once again, many many people are coming here looking for pictures of Kelly Clarkson nude, naked, or in porn. For the seven hundred and fifty-seventh time. I don't have those pictures!
A Plan for Spam
Dave got this before me, but it's still an incredibly well written and interesting article. I've already read it twice.
At the end of my road there's a house with a ratty, tattered, torn, and faded American flag flying. It flies all day and all night, with no light shining on it. Underneath it flies a pirate flag, and underneath that flies a Confederate battle flag. For many months I've been upset with the Confederate battle flag, but the fact that the American flag flew above it garaunteed the owner's right to freedom of expression. As the American flag got more and more worn out, though, I got more and more upset. Finally, I put together the following letter, which I'll be mailing tomorrow.
Dear Sir,
I am writing in regard to the flag you currently have hanging in front of your residence.
As you may or may not be aware, there are codes at both the national and state level regarding the proper treatment and care of the flag. According to the national codes, “It is the universal custom to display the flag only from sunrise to sunset on buildings and on stationary flagstaffs in the open. However, when a patriotic effect is desired, the flag may be displayed 24 hours a day if properly illuminated during the hours of darkness.” The code also states “The flag, when it is in such condition that it is no longer a fitting emblem for display, should be destroyed in a dignified way, preferably by burning.”
It is my opinion that the flag you’re currently displaying was “no longer a fitting emblem for display” many weeks ago, yet you continue to fly it. According to Massachusetts state law “Whoever publicly … defaces or treats contemptuously the flag of the United States or of Massachusetts, whether such flag is public or private property … shall be punished by a fine of not less than one hundred dollars or by imprisonment for not more than one year, or both.”
Many people feel that America’s youth is apathetic; they feel that we are unaware of the sacrifices made by our forefathers as they sacrificed their lives in order to secure the freedoms that the flag represents. Having two grandfathers who served our country and having been at school in Pennsylvania only miles away from where Flight 93 went down on September 11th, I am not a typical young person. I feel strongly that we need to respect our country and the symbols associated with it.
Months ago I stopped at the end of my road, mouth agape at the site of the confederate battle flag flying, a flag that myself and many others see as representing repression and hatred. At one of the most important times in history for our nation to stand united, I was outraged that you would fly a symbol of national conflict and disunion. The fact that you were flying the American flag, a symbol of free speech, guarantees you the right to hang whatever flags you wish. However, I ask that you treat it with the respect and dignity that it deserves.
Please take your old flag down. You can have it burned in a proper ceremony by giving it to the local VFW, which you can contact by phone at (ooo) ooo-oooo or in person at XXX State Road.
The man doesn't think GPS jammers are such a hot idea.
Homemade GPS jammers raise concerns - Computerworld
In modern post 9-11 America, it's nice to see this kind of work. I'm a strong supporter of getting the terrorists/bad-guys. I don't support, however, creating a government gestapo that can run a-muck stomping on Civil-Liberties as they see fit. This is America, damn it. If I don't want the man to be able to track me by GPS, then I have every right to block him from doing it. Maybe I'll build one of these things just on principle.
I spent the majority of my day playing Metroid Prime. I managed to obtain the X-Ray visor as well as the Plasma beam. The X-Ray visor is hard core. When wearing it, if Samus reaches up to cover her face, you can see her bones. As for the plasma beam, I truly enjoy watching space pirates burn. That rules.
In other hardware related news, I finally got my linux box online. I'm only using Linux 7.something though. According to Asa, 8.0 is really good. I'd love to try it out, but I don't want to buy it and it will take f o r e v e r to download the CD's. Anyone know anything about update an already installed version of Linux and how long it takes?
As an aside, on the off chance that my auto trackback pings your site Asa, and you end up coming here and reading this, if you'd like help getting your old template to work with MT, I'd be glad to help you out. Just email me a copy of an old page and your old CSS. It'll only take a little while.
glassdog.HOME
Sometimes I try out new HTML tags just to see if there are cool undocumented HTML tags like <poo> or <homer>, but so far... not so much.
CNN.com - New Potter book goes public June 21
Yes! I can't wait either. I really really liked the fourth one. Matter of fact, I didn't really get to talk about it much, so let this thread be the start of my new Harry Potter discussion. Feel free to bring in relevant info from other fantasy literature, and be warned: the very first comment is going to have spoiler info, so stay away if you haven't read the books yet.
So this morning I ranted a little about a post over at Manero.org. Tony said Mark needs a presentation layer so that he can markup his content any way he wants. After reading my response, he then very politely asked me to explain my comments, as he wasn't sure what it was that I disapproved of. I didn't think he'd ever come here and read my post... Hey Tony, how'd you find me?
It's my opinion that we have a misunderstanding here. Maybe it's just me, but maybe it's not. I don't think we all understand what Mark's problem is and how it relates to the different pieces of the standards/publishing puzzle.
Mark uses Movable Type. It lets him publish his page using templates that can translate his data into whatever form he likes. Mark makes an XHMTL 1.0 template and gets an XHTML page. He makes an XML template, and gets an XML page. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Mark's complaint, as I understand it, is not with his ability to transfer his content into any given format, his issue is with the semantics available to him in a particular format: XHTML 2.0. Now to be fair, he can change to a differnt mark up langauge, and he did choosing HTML. Did you hear him complain that his content management system couldn't handle the conversion? That his data was poisoned and it was sooo tough to take all that text and mark it up differently? Nope. You heard him say (and I'm paraphrasing) that it sucked that XHTML 2.0 dropped the semantic pieces he liked using.
I don't think there's a problem with the CMS, I think there's a problem with semantics, what we do with them, and what we expect from them. If you add them to your text, it becomes very easy to change them from format to format with a quick search and replace. The question is what you should be adding in the first place. Mark has mentioned the difficulty surrounding semantic markup in the past. One that he missed is conveying the actual purpose and meaning behind creating semantic pages. That's where the problem is.
I guess I lashed out at Tony unfairly, but this is the second time someone responded to a comment Mark made by claiming he should throw a different content management system at his troubles and they'd go away. I don't think that's the case. At all.
Or at least explain to me where my thinking is wrong. Is that so much to ask?
Why do people say this kind of stuff?
Presentation Layer: Layer 6. This layer responds to service requests from the Application Layer and issues service requests to the Session Layer. The Presentation Layer relieves the Application Layer of concern regarding syntactical differences in data representation within the end-user systems. Note: An example of a presentation service would be the conversion of an EBCDIC-coded text file to an ASCII-coded file.
My understanding is that a presentation layer is an abstraction of the data, ie a database to the code that pulls and displays the content in the database. Mark has that. He uses Movable Type, a weblog content management system that stores the text in a database. Can you embed html in the text? Yes. Can you just as easily use a search and replace to remove or change that markup? Yes. What is the alternative? For Mark to create his own alternative markup language representing quotes, blockquotes, citations, links, etc. and then to translate that on the fly or at build time into HTML / XHTML / XML / RSS. Why not just use HTML or XHTML to begin with? Oh, that's right, that's what he's doing. Am I missing something here?
Mozilla Project Hurt by Apple's Decision to use KH
I've linked to a specific portion of the discussion at slashdot, a portion that I found the most interesting. It supposedly came form hyatt's website over the weekend and was taken down, and details very specifically, in his mind, why one engine was chosen over another. Quite entertainging read, even if the possibility exists that he didn't write it.
Recently, Mark posted about the XHTML 2.0 spec being worked on by the W3C. Mark's conclusion? He was none too impressed. Today, Jeffrey Zeldman responded.
I've been reading Zeldman's site since I was in high school. For those of you keeping score, that's about seven years now. I've always had a lot of respect for him. He's smart, well-spoken, and has a great sense of humor (if you dig that dry, witty, sarcastic stuff). Send him an email and you'll usually get a response, even if it's just a few quick words of support. He knows a lot, because he's been there, and he's happy to share.
I've been reading Mark's site for a lot less time, but what kept me coming back was that he was doing interesting things, explaining them all the while. Lots of people got caught up in the neatness of it all, and Mark gained a sizable audience. He was implementing new ideas and he was showing us how to come aong for the ride. Mark showed us why standards mattered.
In Mark's post, and Zeldman's response, there's a sense of father/son. Zeldman, one of the people who fought so ardently for standards, and Mark a user who feels frustrated and betrayed.
It's upsetting to see such a reaction to new standards from someone who's been such a strong supporter. It's encouraging, though, to hear someone like Zeldman, someone who's been around for a while, say that it's going to be ok, that the web's not going anywhere, and that we'll be alright in the end.
If I had to write a new browser, and I was going to have to touch the layout code in a serious way, I would think about Mozilla alternatives. I think it's awesome that they pretty much have to compare Safari to Chimera and Netscape/Mozilla, because it shows how far we've come from the universal acceptance of IE's hegemony. I think it's fantastic that they chose to include "Gecko" in their user-agent, so that they could get standards-compliant content, because it means that our evangelism efforts in support of such content have been working. I'm thrilled that they're going to be another IE-alternative browser, which will try some techniques Mozilla decided against, because we can see if it really works or not. And I really really hope that Mozilla will learn from Safari/KHTML, because they've done a lot of great work in about a tenth of the code. Kudos, guys, and welcome to the web.via :: shaver
I spent the majority of my weekend trying to get a modem to work under linux (still unsuccessfully) and trying to write a mailbot in php. After much reading and frolicking, I got an email to forward to my script and then to be logged in a file. This is a huge success, as I'm working within the confines of my hosts CPanel setup with no shell access. More on this as I get things together.
kuro5hin.org || technology and culture, from the trenches
It hasn't happened yet, but I see a "reckless linking" lawsuit where someone sues Slashdot or another site for causing monetary damages.
Good call. Short article, but worth the read, and a legitimate concern for a lot of people. Someone asked me if they could link to my site today, not a big deal since neither of us get traffic on the scale of a site like slashdot, so I replied that information wants to be free, so go ahead, yada yada. That's the thing, though, I pay a hosting fee already, and that's as free as my information gets. I don't want to pay a bandwidth bill. Definitely an interesting subject.
So it turns out that Hyatt is part of the Safari team at Apple. This is excellent news for Safari, as Hyatt was a major player in the development of Chimera. It does, however, make me wonder even more why gecko wasn't chosen as the rendering engine. Having stolen Dave away from Mozilla, did Apple not want to rock the boat even more by having him continue to work on Moz? Is it an issue with the licenses the two projects work with? Is it really just technically based (one engine is smaller than the other)?
No matter what the deal is, there are two things of interest here: 1) Hyatt's site will become a good place to get up to date information about the browser and 2) his previous work on Mozilla will lead to speculation about Safari. In any case, I like Hyatt, and I look forward to hearing even more about Safari from him now that he's graduated from having to gaurd the balcony, that is...
I downloaded both Chimera and Safari. Chimera is almost 5mb larger (unexpanded and uninstalled). This leads me to wonder, the other major browser designed by an operating system company is heavily integrated into the operating system. Does Safari benefit from using system components which allow it to be smaller? I don't have a mac to find out, so I guess I'll never know. Or, maybe, when Dave gets back, he can tell me.
Yesterday I signed up at Boston online's blog listing which I found by registering at geourl.org as mentioned by Mark. It's a neat idea and a great solution to the problem of finding locations for things. It may even be possible to write a script that searches pages for their address, finds their geographic info, and adds them to the database, thereby increasing the usefulness of the tool.
Note: it seems geourl is currently down, probably due to the slashdotting it received.
Got a few things to mention. First, I fixed the comment form, which broke with last nights changes. I also appreciate the comments people have been leaving and the email I've been getting. I've been replying where I can, so keep track of the latest comments in the sidebar to the right so you can follow the discussion. Of particular interest right now is the thread about video games. By the way, did you know that Nintendo announced a new GameBoy with a flip top screen? I wonder how it'll effect the ability for it to connect to the GameCube.
In other news, Apple announced a new browser today for OS X.2 called Safari based on khtml, the Konqueror rendering engine. I'm kind of upset that they didn't use gecko for the rendering engine. I read a few reasons why, but I'd like to see more. Guess I better go read Apple's safari page.
I've started work on the markup behind my site. Tonight I removed some redundant classes and fixed some anchors so that they're on titles and not above them. Some alignment issues have arisen, but other than that things seem to be ok. Please let me know if you see any changes or problems.
Last week or the week before, Mark created a listing of posts by citation using the cite tag. Suddenly many people realized that there were a lot of neat things left to explore in the (X)HTML standards and many interesting discussions were started. Normally, in these discussions, I play the role of one of the unlearned heathens, keeping my mouth closed, my ears open, and my notepad handy as I try to learn from people who understand all of these things a lot better than me. However, after reading this at monokromatik, I had to put my two cents in.
I've always had some trouble understanding the differences between separating content from style using CSS and doing it through databasing. Some well-written scripts can pull content from a database, format it, add images and navigation, and either send it straight to the client or build static pages for client use. By using includes and scripting, your content remains separate from your design and you can then re-purpose that content easily.
The more I read about the semantic web, though, the more I figure out that it's not how you seperate your content from your design, it's the meta data you add in the process. The blockquote tag is a good example of this. When repurposing content without using it, determining which pieces are quotes and which aren't becomes more difficult.
Brian claims that by adding html to your content, you're "poisoning" it. If I understand correctly, it's his opinion that instead of using the blockquote tag, we should instead have a database table called quotes with a field for the article the quote is used in, and with another field for the quote. Repeat this for all the different types of content a post could conntain. Subheaders? Make a table. Lists? Make a table. Anywhere you'd use html, Brian implies you should break this content out and categorize it on the CMS side of things.
Now maybe that's wrong. Maybe instead, he's implying we should write our own markup and use it on our posts, allowing us to then use our CMS system to translate that into html or whatever we need. Doesn't XML solve that problem? That's what publishing companies are using it for. Create your own DTD specifying your tag sets and go to town.
In either case, it seems to me that xHtml does the job more simply without the overhead, and in such a way that later it's easy to change. Isn't that what things like regular expressions are for? The qualification, here, is that you need to do a good job with your markup. Mark wouldn't have been able to pull all of his posts if he hadn't been marking them up consistently.
Brian says "If it sounds a hell of a lot nicer than having to parse each and every article/post looking for CITE elements, then that's because it *is*." I don't understand how a quick regex expression looking for cite tags is any different from a sql query for quote attributes in a database. However, if you degree with this, feel free to argue.
What the hell is up with the NFL? Did you see those games today? Sheesh. Nail-biters all the way. I'm upset that the Steeler's won, but I think they'll get roughed up by the Titans next week. I can't stand the Jets, so guess how I feel about they're advancing. I'd rather have seen the Giants move on, but what can you do. The highlights of Vick were amazing... Does that guy phase out of existence to avoid tackles and fade back in to score touchdowns?
Overall, even if I'm not happy with the teams advancing, I'm happy with the level of play. Should make for some interesting playoff games if nothing else.
So what did I do to ring in the first weekend of the new year? I painted my mom's living room. And today, I was a sore and hurting bastard. That was her giftmas present because she wanted it done and couldn't do it herself, and she's really happy with it, but I'll try to stay away from painting living rooms in the near future.
I played some more Metorid this weekend as well, and again, I have to say, I'm quite impressed. Managed to obtain the thermal visor and almost peed myself with excitement. Also got the wave beam. The graphics, once again, are incredible. The attention to detail is what really gets me going, though. When I played on the PS2, one of the things that really annoyed me was the awful load times. Metroid doesn't seem to have those. Enter the game and play. You have access to huge amounts of the environment without pause. When you do move from one place to another and new things need loading, you don't get a status bar and a loading message, you get a wonderfully animated animation, with Samus looking around nervously, blinking, and breathing.
With all the other stuff going on in my life, I won't beat this one soon, but I'd like to ask. Anyone got any recommendations for what my next game should be?
Ever since reading about moblogging over at v-2 Organisation , I've been extremly interested. The idea of being able to access blog entries by date, time, category, and now possibly location is extremely interesting (note: gps based posting systems were discussed on slashdot at one point, but I'm too lazy to look up a link). It's pretty boring if you think about one blogger; I don't go too many places and when I do, I post infrequently about them (part of this is due to the fact that I have to remember what I want to post about until I get home). However, if location was a bit of metadata about a post that could easily be captured, and you could collect links to posts as well as the location they refer to into a repository, you'd have a really neat system (Example). When trying to decide what movie to see out of what's playing at a given theater, you could hit the system from your cell and see what other bloggers liked or didn't. You could get restaurant reviews. You could get traffic advice ("I know a shortcut from here..."). You could follow a historic trail, post by post, just like being with a tour-guide.
So how would this system work? Well, Joi Ito is blogging by email. Someone else is blogging by instant messenger (sorry, can't find the link). The system needs to support as wide a range of options as possible so as to support the largest number of devices. Devices in my opinion will be the biggest restraint, due to the difficulty in creating a post useing them. An audio based, system, however, would be extremely neat. I've been thinking about audio blogging a lot lately. There are already apps that can answer your phone and take a message like an answering machine, so it's possible to have them answer the phone, record the message, dial your ISP, FTP the audio to your server, and finally to link it in your blog. As more phones support different media, it could be possible to listen to these audio clips on your phone. The final bit that needs to be done is some way of converting the post to text easily so that it can be searched.
Actually, that's probably not the final bit, but it sounds nice. In reality, there are lots of things that I'm overlooking, I'm sure, but the important thing is that these types of projects are getting closer and closer to becoming reality, which in my opinion is pretty damn cool.
mySQL has redesigned their site, making it easier to find what you want. I still, however, can't determine the date when version 4 will be recommended for use. According to eWeek in this article benchmarking some major database engines (minus Postgres, which is strange), version 4 performed as well as Oracle9i. It's nice to see such an easy to use and open source project doing so well. Also, I read the other day that there's some work going on with the Mozilla crew in order to allow XUL based Mozilla apps to connect to databases (they've already got a Postgres version). Since XUL can be downloaded from a server, anyone using a new mozilla client will have access to the latest version of your application. The possibilities are limitless.
I've collected the contact information for my Senators and Congresspeople, and I'm drafting a letter to send to them regarding my post yesterday about the man who's pregnant wife was allegedly improperly searched at an airport. I say allegedly because I wasn't there, but it doesn't mean the fact that it could have happened upsets me any less.
Dave and I are thinking about a signature collection, however at this point, we don't know what we'd be collecting them for, besides a showing of support and as a way to make it known that the public thinks this is wrong. I haven't yet decided what type of action should occur or what changes should be made (besides the obvious "don't treat people unfairly and punish people who do"). In the meantime, here's another example of what Mr. Monahan's wife experienced.
Fark.com Comments Thingee (393336)
Ok, I admit... I laughed out loud at some of these pics. May take a while to load, but worth the wait.
Over at Vaxcave, Dave has a post linking to an article by Nicholas Monahan about his experience with his pregnant wife at an airport. The story isn't for lightweights, but it's important reading for Americans.
The problem is that there's nothing you can do about these situations if you don't have the money to afford a lawyer. What can you do? Write your congrssperson? Your senator? It's my opinion that most of them are pretty useless over all.
I'm all for protecting against terrorism, but where do we draw the line? I'd like to see it put down in such a way that things like this never happen. Ever.
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